On My Terms
by Good Old Hoxton
Summary: After being fired for a clear disregard of teamwork and human life, a single RED Sniper finds brief employment with a notorious criminal, only to be arrested the same night in a place he doesn't understand nor recognize. However, after a deal with an interesting head teacher of a prestigious warrior academy, the Sniper is given the job of supply teacher. What could go wrong?
1. World's Fastest Jobhunt

Voices and coughs rang out through the thick white smoke filling the lower portion of Foundry's battlefield. The few RED team members making their way through were keeping weapons ready just in case something survived the blitz of...whatever the _hell_ was used to make those bombs. Among rocks and obliterated sentry guns, a few BLUs had survived the onslaught, lying in pools of blistering flesh and burnt blood whilst crying for someone to just end it. They'd come back the next round, sure, but...Jesus. The leading RED Heavy paused for a moment upon sighting a Scout with most of his insides now outside but still conscious, just staring at the internal organs he held in his hands with a blank but burned face. He'd seen Pyro rush victims, he'd seen people survive full crockets to the front, he'd seen those with their bodies nearly shredded open by sentry gunfire, but never anything like this.

He held back vomit. "I...I do not like this..." he swallowed, breathing heavily and leaning against the wall as a Medic stood by him. "You...leave Heavy, Heavy does not want to go in there." The leading Demoman, kitted out in full bomb-disposal gear, paused to look back at the hulking Russian, before solemnly nodding.

"Alright." He gave a look to the Medic standing by him. "Make sure he doesn't throw up. He needs his energy. We'll...go on ahead." Giving yet another brief nod to them, he turned and gestured for the rest of the group to follow. He was pretty much the team leader, sure, and he did agree to use the new explosives that Face had been brewing, but Jesus Fucking Christ. Nobody had survived intact: The very air around them felt like it was burning away at what little exposed skin he had showing, and the smoke stung his eye. Frowning, he made another look around the area as he led the way into the completely empty enemy spawn area.

The usually clean concrete road was, by all accounts, fucked completely. Ash clung to the air, blood pooled around nearly incinerated corpses, and flesh had melted and stuck to whatever was nearest to it when the new pipes rolled in. Even the solid steel sentry gun had melted, along with the BLU Gunslinger Engineer's right hand and the Soldier using the teleporter had horrifically melded with it as a mutant creature that did nothing but screech in an ungodly manner.

One of the Scouts with the group looked down on one of the Soldiers with melted legs, desperately yet feebly reaching out as though the enemy would help. "This..." he said quietly, his eyes wide in unfiltered shock. "This is too much."

"Stop talking," the leading Demoman ordered. The Scout looked at the back of the group leader.

"I'm sorry, _what?_" His inner temperature began to rise as he registered that he was expected to not speak out about the horrors they'd brought upon the other team.

"The smoke's toxic," an Engineer said flatly, holding his toolbox on one shouler and tipping his stetson slightly to avoid looking at a Medic that had burned and sizzled until he popped all over a wall. "Y'all oughta keep your mouth shut if ya know what's good for ya." The Scout considered protesting, but realized that starting an argument wasn't going to be any help to them. There were about 6 of them, minus the Medic and Heavy that refused to enter, and...him. A silent vow was made by most of the men there to never speak with him again after this.

Finally, after what felt like a walk through hell itself, they reached the BLU spawn. The two resupply locker doors had sagged, melted, and then stuck back together again, converting them into useless pieces of metal. Getting them open would be no difference: Even though the ammunition hadn't completely exploded inside, the casings would no doubt have stuck together, rendering them all unusable. Nearby, another BLU teleporter had completely been converted into a puddle of liquid with a few barely recognizable pieces barely retaining shape in the metallic mass, and the Engineer that had been tending it must have been hit by one of the pipes directly: All that decorated the wall was a huge black stain, and in the center was the eerie silhouette of a man raising his arms in...what?

Terror? Pain? Acceptance?

None of the REDs wanted to think about it.

Suddenly, the Soldier and Scout caught movement in a pile of rubble near the spawn room door. The duo weren't stupid, Spies were capable of anything with their equipment, so both men took no chances by pointing their guns straight at his head. The man in question was in a sorry state: His suit, shirt, and flesh had become one with each other, all stuck together in an unrecognisable and undoubtedly excruciating mess of heat and fabric. His balaclava had burned away completely, incinerated and stuck to what little skin he had remaining. Both of his legs were burned to stumps. Slowly registering the guns being pointed in his face, the Spy looked right up at them. At one point, Soldier noted, he might have been rich: A pile of mush and ash sat beside him, the remains of a hat. However, this didn't faze the trooper nearly as much as it should have. He kept his gun barrel pointed squarely at the head of the Frenchman, not aiming away.

The Demoman, almost a de faux leader of the team, stepped forward and crouched in front of the BLU. He didn't even seem to register that the Demoman was there, until he uttered one word.

"_Why...?_"

"I'm so sorry," Demo sighed. "You're the enemy, it's how we operate." The Spy finally looked the explosives expert in the eye, and the Demo could almost feel the minutes of pain he must have endured.

"_We were friendly..._"

The Spy went limp finally, leaving Demo speechless. "Oh no."

Rounding the corner, the group realised just want they'd done as they looked into the spawn room. Through a smoldering hole in the metal door, they could see that in the middle of the room, a pipe must have gone off and instantly killed everyone present before they realized what was happening. All around the room, their so-called 'enemies' were in the positions they had been in when they'd been killed: In a corner, there were two burned men standing a few feet apart, shaking hands and offering out piles of mush similar to that which Soldier had seen outside. Their final moments had been spent trading hats with each other, an innocent task. Across the room, a Sniper and a Scout stood with their heads stuck together in a string of meaty gore connecting the fronts of their skulls. The Sniper's glasses had melted away, explaining the metallic puddle in front of his corpse, and the Scout's earpiece had simply slopped apart due to its plastic nature and melted onto his skin. Their connected hands were little more than a ball of sopping meat, and the barely visible expressions on their faces showed a final second of happiness and camaraderie before the blast killed them. And in the middle of the room, surrounded by a small crowd of charred bodies, there were a pair of spies, one stood smoking a non-existent cigarette and the other in a crab position.

Demo covered his mouth as he gasped in sheer, unbridled horror, recoiling from the door and sitting against a wall to allow the other men with him to react in their own ways to what they now realized.

They were friendlies. They wouldn't have attacked regardless of their duties.

And now they were all dead, taken from their one place of safety.

And all because of...him.

Demo growled, snatching up his grenade launcher and standing back up. The rest of the REDs looked at him as he stormed away through the smoke, prompting Engineer and Scout to follow as Demo dragged Heavy along too. Whatever he was doing was going to get ugly.

The RED base was silent, the only sound being the quiet beeping of computers and the wind blowing through the mountain facility. Around the point, there were the two corpses of BLU's less friendly combatants, one from RED who tried to defend himself and failed, and above them, the man who got the BLU that killed the RED that killed the BLU. Adorning his feet as he placed them on the railings were a pair of heavy red cowboy boots, covering the bottoms of a pair of khaki trousers with a pouched belt slung over its waist. He was covered by a black motorcycle jacket with red stripes on its sleeve, and a red polo shirt beneath that, and a brown slouch with a red band of crocodile teeth covering his head. He had the usual pair of sunglasses worn by Snipers, the same cheek and nose scar, the same hairstyle, same miserable gaze, but the only different thing was his growing of a slightly thicker stubble than most of his fellow Australian marksmen. He, along with everybody else, may have been a clone of an original Mercenary employed by Redmond or Blutarch Mann, but that didn't mean he wasn't allowed individuality. He sat on a normal wooden chair in his perch, leaning back against the wall with his legs crossed and resting on the railings. Sat just beside him was his beloved Sniper Rifle with a black robot head slung beneath it on a strap, an SMG, and a Bushwacka. And just for good measure, he'd taken the liberty of keeping a small, high-power revolver in a small holster against his hip.

SMGs weren't _exactly_ what they used to be in terms of stopping power, so a backup was always useful.

As he idly gazed about the control point, arms hung lazily by his sides towards the floor, he reached up and scratched his stubble. "Haven't heard anything from the front for a while," he mused, checking his watch. "Battle started 10 minutes ago. What the hell are they doing over there?" His question was answered as a loud, familiar voice rang out through the control point cavern.

"**FACE!**" roared Demo as he stormed into the room from a lower entrance. The Sniper raised a hand from the upper perch, not moving from his seat.

"Yo," he called down. "Something wrong?"

"What the fuck are you thinking, asking me if there's something fucking wrong?! Those pipe bombs you made were fucking evil! They killed the entire enemy team in one go!"

"That was the point," Face whistled. "They're explosives. They're meant to blow up and kill shit. Thought you'd know that by now."

"They didn't just blow up: They burned! They burned the flesh from their bloody bones, leaving them to suffer and die slowly rather than quickly! You know that's not how we work!"

"Well, I personally consider this a field test for the explosives I've been making. Gets the job done, as far as I'm concerned. Also, why the fuck do you care? They're just BLUs, they'll come ba-"

"The explosion destroyed their RESPAWN device!" Demo practically screamed, filling the air with a deadly silence as the rest of the REDs gathered to watch the two figureheads of the team arguing. "You killed _all of them_! They are not coming back! You have just destroyed the very reason we stay here, at this facility, and defend it! And those men would have gone back to families, friends, wives, children, and you just ripped them away from it! You've gone over the fucking line, _**again**_! What the FUCK is wrong with you, you sick and twisted piece of shit?!" Face was now standing up on the balcony, looking down on the rest of the team. He raised his hands defensively.

"Jesus, calm the fuck down, I didn't know the bombs would do that. You should have tested them on the range before you agreed to use them in combat, and you didn't. And to be honest, what the hell is Builder's League United gonna care about losing some Mercs? We're all expendable, we're all replaceable, it doesn't matter if we live or die. All that matters to them is that they turn a profit or go down trying to break Reliable Excavation and Demolitions. Trust me; if they weren't gonna get replaced and their families compensated handsomely, then I would care. But I don't." Demo paused at this, and sighed, letting silence reign again as Face grabbed his gear, jumped to the nearby drainpipe, and slid down to the ground level so he could meet Demoman. Finally, the explosives expert sighed.

"Listen...OK. I'm sorry, I overreacted, you're right...just...right. Killing them permanently was probably not something you wanted, but I guess it gives us some breathing room for a while, at least. We won't be able to get down there and...properly bury the bodies, because of the smoke and heat. Just tell me what you used to make the bombs, and I...I can make it a bit more usable and practical." Face smiled slightly, before slinging his rifle strap over his shoulder and reaching into his pocket. By now, the other Mercenaries had begun to disperse, leaving Scout, Engineer, Demo, and Face to stand near the pit in the ground that held the control point.

The RED Sniper calmly pulled out a small piece of paper, and on it was listed a few words and notes, the very same notes used in designing those wretched bombs. He and Demo began to walk towards the room where the team members would usually go to modify existing equipment, craft weapons, hats, and other things, and where Demo (and apparently Face) would go to create explosives. "Alright, list what ingredients you used to prime it," Demo began.

"Right then," Face nodded, "For the primer, I used Mann Co. Corpse Grade Quicklime, which we both know is pretty reactive. That was hit by a strike from a rocket launcher's firing pin, and the fuel itself was something called 'White Phosphorous'..." The Scout's eyes went wide, and Engineer's mouth fell open as he raised his stetson. Silence reigned.

"White Phosphorous..." Demo murmured. "Can't say I know much about incendiary chemicals. Isn't phosphorous that stuff that can't be extinguished?"

"Hell if I know," Face shrugged. "It was labelled as volatile, so I figured it'd be useful." Scout couldn't believe his ears. He stood, clenching his fists and slowly approaching Face from behind. Engineer tried stopping him with a hand, only to be shoved away by the enraged Bostonian.

"White..._fucking...__**PHOSPHOROUS?!**_" he practically yelled from right behind Demo and Face, causing them to turn and meet the gaze of the angry Scout. "YOU USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS?!" Face rolled his eyes as Demo looked at him with a raised brow.

"Yes, I used White Phosphorous, how the hell was I supposed to know it could fuck shit up that much?" he groaned. "It said it was volatile, it was with the other ingredients on the shelf storing all the other bomb-making chemicals, so how was I mean to be able to realize that it would do that? Everything is stored in a glass jar in there, so it all bloody looks the same." Scout wasn't taking it.

"Men are dead _forever_ because of you, they died painfully and their corpses unrecognisable and unable to be sent back to their families for burial, and **this** is your answer?!" he snapped, glaring the taller man straight in the eyes. There was a deathly silence through the whole facility as the rest of RED was able to hear exactly what was being said through the echoes around the cavernous facility. And none of them liked it, one bit.

"Yes, that is my answer," Face shot back, folding his arms and idly thumbing at the rifle sling over his right shoulder with his left thumb. "And what the hell do you know about chemicals? From all that I've seen of your actions and behaviour, all you do is kill people, laugh at them, then run off and use a bat to hit someone in the head. You treat this corporate war like a game, where you can try out new methods to kill people, then so can I. And it just so happens that my method was infinitely more deadly than yours. So if I were you, _**Bat Boy**_, I'd watch my mouth." Scout gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and counted briefly to three.

One.

Two.

Three.

The moment he hit three, he had been intending to be completely calm about it, and just walk away from the situation. However, his body had other plans that Face was fully ready for; Scout growled in anger at Face's awful reason, and lunged forward at him, aiming for the throat. As the hands neared him, Face side-stepped the lunge, grabbed Scout's wrists and span, dragging Scout along the ground in an arc, before promptly holding him over the seemingly bottomless chasm surrounding the control point. Demo and Engineer hardly had any time to react, but nothing they could do seemed like it would stop Face from letting go. Engineer had his Luger drawn immediately, and Demo had whipped out his Persian Persuader sword in an instant, both seemingly holding Face dead to rights. However, the Sniper was _literally_ holding Scout dead to rights, so if Engineer were to shoot Face or if Demo were to kill him, he'd let go of Scout and send the Bostonian tumbling to his death. So in actuality, Face was holding the cards here.

The rest of RED immediately ran in across the room upon hearing the commotion, most of them with weapons, and Demo had to be quick to order them not to fire. Again, killing Face would drop Scout, and that was _not_ something that Demo would like to see Scout go through. He'd respawn, sure, but the trauma would be just terrible if nobody could save him and he knew it. The cavern, in spite of it being already chillingly quiet, descended further into deafening silence.

"Face," Demo ordered, "Let him go." The Sniper smirked, glaring down at the Scout that was in his hand and hyperventilating.

"You sure that's the best choice of words?" he retorted. "I'm certain that's not something you want me to do."

"You know what I mean, Face," Demo snarled. "What the hell even prompted you to think this was an appropriate course of action?"

"You know me," Face said calmly, giving Scout a slight shake to keep him on his toes. "My job is to defend myself and kill those that try to stop me from doing the first part of my job. And I like my job."

"That isn't a valid excuse for teamkilling," Engineer piped up. "Y'all better put him back on solid ground right now."

"Not a chance," Face retorted. "He came at me, I have every intent to send him the other way. And besides: It's been too long since my last kill."

"You're insane."

"I'm _experienced_. You think being this accurate and combat-trained came cheap? Before I became a Mercenary, I had applied to join the British Army. Halfway through training, the Army budget was cut again and troops in training were told to leave. I was ordered to leave two days before I graduated into the forces. So you know what I did to the guy trying to get me out?" There was a pause. "I slammed his head against the table, smashed a plate, then slammed one of the porcelain shards into the back of his skull. Left him for someone else to find, and as I left the barracks, I was approached by a mysterious woman in purple."

"And we all know what that led to," Demo muttered. "But why would you even do this to Scout? He did nothing to you."

"He tried strangling me, and I think it's only right that I can defend myself. You wanna stop me, go right on ahead." Face narrowed his eyes at Demo.

_"Take him from me."_

"...and that is how I got fired." Face reclined in his train seat almost proudly as the group of other unemployed Mercenaries got fired. Another Sniper raised his hand. He was wearing a pink military beret, red scarf with pink stripes, and a pink skull-jaw bandana, not to mention the normal sunglasses of a Sniper.

"You're the White Phosphorous guy that was all over the MercNet?" he asked. Face nodded, seemingly with pride.

"Yup." He inspected his fingernails. "To be honest, I'm not sure why they all got pissy. They wanted explosives that would get rid of the BLUs attacking the Steel facility, and I made some that would **permanently** stop the BLUs from attacking the Steel facility. I did my job, and now I've been fired." The Engineer sat nearby, who had been idly strumming his guitar, whistled through his teeth.

"Well, respectfully, sir, y'all _also_ killed three of your teammates, hid for seven hours straight, then left the facility without even mentioning to them that y'all'd been fired. Face spread his arms apart.

"They respawned!" he exclaimed. "All I was doing was defending myself."

"And for what reason did you need to defend yourself?" asked a Medic dressed as a Wehrmacht Officer. "Because you needed to defend yourself." There was a pause, the only sound through the empty cargo carriage being the train wheels going over the rails and the wind going past the open sides as everybody looked to Face with raised brows as he considered this revelation. "You're not very good at this 'teamwork' thing, are you?"

"No," Face murmured, still looking up in thought. "No, I'm really not." There were a few more seconds of silence from the Mercenaries, before the Engineer with them shifted on the crate he had been sitting on and adjusted his guitar.

"Well," he chuckled, "Doubtless t' say that we all got fired for a reason." Before he began strumming, he took another swig from the bottle of beer that was sat next to him. "Might as well make the best of it, fellas. Hell, some of us might find our next line of work tomorrow!" Not really wanting to start awkward conversations about their sudden unemployment again, the gathered Mercenaries laughed, and the stories aboard the empty cargo carriage continued again as the train made its way to New York City.

It wasn't until about eleven o' clock the next evening that the bell rang at the diner. Since it was only the 1950s, most diners were as you'd expect them to be: Metal trim around the room, neon signs, and booths with tables and red cushioned seats. The staff were working a night shift, so it didn't matter that Face had been their only customer for the past few hours, buying coffee as needed so he could continue putting rings around possible jobs in a directory. He barely raised an eye at the bell ringing to signal someone's entrance to the diner, however the waiter at the bar seemed to.

"Good evening, Mister," he greeted in a cheerful yet forced way. "Can I get ya anything?" The response was silence for a moment, followed by a rather smooth voice.

"No," replied the customer, "No, I'll be fine." The barman was taken aback.

"Ah, that's...fine, just lemme know if anything catches your eye."

"I'll keep that in mind." Footsteps followed the words over the tiled floor, ringing out considerably over the Tom Jones Memorial record playing from the jukebox. Finally, they stopped beside Face, but he didn't lift his head up.

The man near him did seem to want his attention, however, so the sudden sound of a cane tapping against the floor finally convinced Face to look up and see what the hell the guy wanted.

The first thing he noted was that his visitor did not look local. He was wearing a white coat with black trousers and shoes, buttoned shut with the top of a scarf peeking from the top, and a bowler hat placed over a mop of ginger hair. The man was smoking a cigar, but that didn't draw Face's attention from the fact that he was also wearing mascara. The fashionable man had his cane pressed against the floor with one hand, and he was using it to support himself as he looked Face over. There were a few moments where both parties looked each other over.

Face was already trying to figure out his intentions. '_There's no way in hell that this guy has headhunted me. Unemployed Mercenaries aren't announced in the news until three days after dismissal, and this is the first night. But what the hell is he wearing? Looks important. Maybe he pulled a few strings and checked the unemployment list before it went public. But why'd he come looking for me?_'

Finally, the man cast a glance over to the plethora of weapons Face had near him. His Botkiller rifle was leaning against the chair, barrel up, both his SMG and Revolver were on the table, and his Kukri was quite visible on his back. The barman hadn't really spoken out about it, since Mercenaries had started becoming fairly common around New York. He looked Face in the eyes. "You're unemployed, right?" he asked in a monotone voice. Face stared back at him with a grimace, before nodding. "Fancy making a few extra Lie...bucks?"

"What's it to you?" Face asked flatly. The man smirked, pulling the cigar from his mouth and tapping it on the head of his cane to remove excess ash.

"Fortunately for you, my good man, it just so happens that my..._associate _is looking for hired guns. And you certainly look the type to be a hired gun."

"_Fired_ gun." Face corrected. "Where the hell is this leading? I haven't heard of you before, how the hell do I know I can trust you?"

"Well then, I suppose it'd be polite for me to introduce myself." The man, without any indication that Face had let him do so, sat down opposite the Sniper and extended a gloved hand. "My name is Roman Torchwick. I pay two-hundred-and-fifty dollars per day, if I find your services to be up to standard. And you are a Mercenary. Hired gun. Just what I've been looking for." Face considered the offer. '_Better than nothing._'

"Alright, I'll play along," Face sighed. "What do I need to do?"

"Simple," Roman said calmly. "Judging by your equipment, I'd assume you were a hunter or assassin before you became a Mercenary. That means your job will entail remaining on a rooftop or aircraft to provide covering fire against anybody attacking my men." Face stroked his beard.

"Will you supply ammunition?" he asked.

"Certainly can; The boss seems to enjoy my hobby of collecting the stuff." Roman smirked. Face finally extended his hand over to Roman's, and firmly shook.

"Alright then, I'm aboard." He nodded. "My name's Face." Roman narrowed his eye that went unobscured by his brilliant orange fringe and smiled.

"Well, that certainly is good news," he said in a strangely calm way. "I think you'll fit into your job quite nicely, Face." Just then, he checked his watch. "Oh, and perfect timing, I was expecting this to be a lost cause and need to leave you alone, but it seems that you wanted a job more than I'd expected." Swiftly, Roman stood. "I hope you didn't have anything planned for tonight, because we're going to need to be leaving right away." Face blinked, considered for a moment, then slowly shrugged.

"Hell, at least there isn't a waiting period," he whistled, standing up and grabbing his equipment; As usual, he slung his rifle strap over his shoulder, slipped the revolver in its holster, and clipped his SMG to his belt, before stepping out of the small booth space and following after Roman. He gave a small wave to the barman and chef in the back, then disappeared out the door, leaving a booth with a single directory. The opened page had only one bounty notice half-circled, incomplete as Face was interrupted and not really paying attention to the name on the page.

'_Dimensional Bounty Notice: R. Torchwick, thief and terrorist sympathizer. Dead or Alive. Reward: 1,000,000 Lien_'

Face was quite surprised at how advanced this 'Torchwick' guy was. They'd gone to the top of an apartment building a few blocks down from the diner, and then before Face could even ask if Roman was gonna push him, the wind suddenly whipped up as a futuristic hover-jet flew up by the side of the building, side door open and revealing a group of men in white costumes and masks. While all this was impressive, Face thought as he stepped aboard (much to the distaste of the men already present), he was mostly wondering why many of these people were wearing strange animal ears and tails. Judging by the outfits and ongoing theme of white, he assumed that this was some kind of Mercenary outfit with a uniform code, so he definitely stood out with his black jacket with red trim, brown hat with a red tooth band, brown trousers, and brown cowboy boots with red leather. Also, he was still wearing sunglasses at 1:30AM, which earned some confusion and interest from the men around him.

As the jet took off and flew from New York, passing over the Statue of 'Murica that had been recently refurbished with more machine guns, Roman stood at the door to the cockpit of the jet and turned to the men gathered, all of whom were sitting down and mostly looking at Face, since he stuck out like a Huntsman arrow on a Heavy. "Well, good evening, gentlemen!" Roman said in a sarcastic tone. "I trust you've all gotten to know each other in the time I've been roaming that hellhole of a human city and gathering our brothers, because tonight is the night we strike back at the humans." The gathered men, save Face, cheered and pumped fists at the announcement, and much to Face's concern put on small metal masks that covered the top halves of their faces. They seemed to be based on monsters of some kind, and Roman's previous statement was making Face really rethink if it's a good business strategy to take employment from gingers in bowler hats.

Just then, the man next to Face slapped his knee, and then gestured to his mask. "Get your mask on, human," he snapped. Face raised a brow.

"What mask?" he asked, nonchalantly ignoring the glares from the men around the jet as it soared over open ocean at unfathomable speeds for the 1970s. "I can't wear something I haven't been given. Plus, as far as I can see, that'll obstruct my vision." Roman rolled his eyes.

"Alright ladies," he said in a mocking tone. "How about I introduce the newest member to our little club?" He slapped Face on the shoulder and shook him slightly, looking over the rest of the white-clad men. "This is Face. He's an ex-huntsman, and he'll be providing us support if anything is to happen." One of the masked men folded his arms and made a 'pfft' sound.

"You say that as though he ain't gonna turn us up at the last minute!" he said loudly, causing minor uproar. Roman quietened the men, and hooked his arm over Face's shoulder.

"Oh, I _guarantee_ he won't be turning us up, right, Facey?" Roman's voice filled with venom as he glared daggers at the Sniper. Face sighed.

"Listen, I don't know what you think I am, do, or know, but to be honest I couldn't give a fuck about what you guys are doing. As long as it pays, I'll kill bastards all day long. I'm a Mercenary, a hired gun, if you will, I don't care for politics or..._talking_, so just tell me where to shoot and I'll kill it." The men went silent considering this.

"I'm still not so sure about hiring some thug to help the White Fang," another man noted. "This is a pretty high-profile raid, we don't need some inexperienced Beacon reject messin' this up."

"The hell's a Beacon?" Face asked calmly as Roman went back into the cockpit. "I was born in England and moved to America to keep my job at RED. Never went to 'Beacon'. Few years of dangerous game hunting on my belt, though. Literally." He gave the crocodile teeth on his hat a small tap. The men paused, and one of them chuckled, prompting the others to gradually join in as they leaned closer.

"You're an Earthborn?" he asked, grinning teeth visible beneath his mask. "Looks like you won't be lasting as long as we thought here on Remnant."

"_Remnant?_" Face asked, raising a brow.

"Vale, to be specific," a sudden, smooth female voice said. After one look at the door, all of the present 'White Fang' members stood up straight from their seats at attention. Face gave one look at the door and narrowed his eyes. Standing in the door to the cockpit, no doubt having been replaced by Roman, was a young woman with ash-grey hair that flowed over her left shoulder. She was wearing a maroon dress with yellow tribal-esque markings up and down the sleeves and body, and a pair of brown heels with a small anklet on her right leg. She had a sly facial configuration, however her eyes were an eerie gold colour. She unnerved Face quite a bit, but if he was being honest with himself, he actually found her quite attractive. She stood with her hand on her hip, looking everybody over, until her eyes fell onto Face, who was still sat down and grimacing slightly. After a moment of silently judging him and looking him over, she looked to the other men. "Take up arms and be ready to move." The rest of the White Fang members nodded, and moved away from their original positions, grabbing strange-looking rifles from a nearby rack, then standing at the door. Finally, Face stood up, holding his rifle over his shoulder. Just as he was about to move over to the others, he was stopped.

"Wait." The woman had given an order. He was probably going to have to listen to her, she sounded and looked important. Face turned to look at the woman. As he stood at about six foot one inches tall, he was only a slight taller than the woman in front of him. However, he was still looking down on her, which meant he could probably hold her at arms' length if he needed to. He stood there for a moment, and it seemed she hadn't finished assessing him as she looked him up and down. "Ex-Sniper." She said in a smooth way. "A hunter, as well. You look the type to know how to fight."

"Having survived in a Mann Co. Approved workplace, I need to know that." Face retorted. "And how did you know I'm an ex-Sniper and hunter?"

"I know some men better than they know themselves," she said calmly. "And I know that this is going to have been your first real fight for a while."

"2 days, approximately, and that was against my own team in self-defence."

"Hmm. Well, let's hope you know how to combat the enemy, too." Face unslung his rifle, and gestured to a small counter embedded in the right side. Cinder leaned in slightly to read its numbers.

"10,000 kills and counting. I might end up with a few more by the end of the night."

"We'll see." As the smaller woman turned to re-enter the cockpit, Face spoke up after he caught himself looking at her rear as she walked away in a rather sultry manner.

"I never caught your name, Miss...?"

She turned, and smiled in a way that instantly suggested to Face that this woman was going to cause him a problem at some point.

"Cinder Fall. A pleasure."


	2. Silver Tongued Snake

Face could see a fair distance from where he'd been dropped off. As the aircraft went by a stack of cargo containers, Face had slid the side door open manually, held the brow of his hat, then leapt out onto the crate as the jet continued on its path. The other men paid only some attention to their human compatriot, only seeming to realize that he was going to go and set up with his gun somewhere after a few moments. He did a quick roll, whipping his SMG from his belt, flicking it upwards from his right thigh, then pressing his elbow into his hip to absorb recoil whilst he scanned the area nearby. He gave his surroundings a once over, keeping the SMG pointed where he was looking, before deeming it safe (from what he could see that night) and clipping it back to his belt. Keeping to a low crouch in case of opposing Snipers that may have been more accurate than he was, he raised his right arm slightly to allow the sling of his rifle to slip down it, flicking his hand up to jump the rifle to a point where he could safely catch it and hold it ready. Overhead, the aircraft that dropped him off settled behind a few cargo crates out of his view, followed by the sound of voices ordering for the men to move into positions, and finally the engine sound increasing as the jet moved off back into the air. If he weren't wearing sunglasses, and if he had given a brief glance through his scope, Face was certain he might be able to see who was flying: Cinder, or Roman?

From what little he'd actually said to his employers, they seemed good enough. Sure, they kind of took him to a different country, _maybe even planet_ without his prior consent, but they didn't mistreat him or anything. If anything, both Cinder and Roman seemed to respect him as a Sniper and hunter. Though, it was difficult to read Cinder: Back on RED, most extra-facility missions that required the Mercs to move out and perform a task away from the main base usually had the same Mercs involved. Scout, Demo, or sometimes Engineer would normally be in civilian clothes on the ground so as not to raise suspicion, Face would set up on a rooftop overlooking the target area and need to be constantly prepared to make a move to a different location or possibly engage opponents in the street, whilst Spy would often take care of infiltrating buildings, escorting hostages, or important eliminations that couldn't spook the crowd via Face's loud rifle. When it came to kidnappings, the victim would be brought back to base, where Spy and Face would normally deal with interrogation.

That was where Face had learned to see through lies and almost literally 'read' people. Sweating, twitches, eye movement, stances: All things Face had been told to watch out for.

The only problem he had with Cinder (outside of the fact she was pretty hot) was that she had mastered the elusive Poker face. She hardly made any noticeable expressions that could be linked to lying or knowing something bigger was going on. She was impossible for Face to understand and it irked him considerably. Still, she seemed nice enough to give him a job without prior interview, and she seemed to trust him enough, but Roman and the White Fang members seemed almost insistent that Face was going to stab them in the back. Ironic, considering that Face would normally be stabbed in the back if he wasn't paying attention.

'_Shame they don't understand how Mercenaries work,'_ Face mused as he gently dropped from the top crate to a lower container so he could get better sightlines. '_They seemed certain that I was undercover or something. I don't care, I just want to keep getting paid.'_ Making certain there were no security guards kicking around the ground level, Face once again kept a grip of his hat brow as he dropped a few meters, landing in a low crouch and once again keeping his rifle pointed horizontally to see off any threats that were present. Once again, since he was still wearing sunglasses outside _and at 1:50AM_, he couldn't see any noticeable problems and began making his way down the alleyway formed between the rows of cargo containers, rifle raised as though he were some kind of Special Forces operative (He liked to think he could have been, had the British Government, headed by Lord Prince MP PM OBE VC MBE Loadsa Money not have requested to cut military funding for more, and quote, 'wads to wop on the countah').

As he went along, he recapped his current situation. Alone, in enemy territory, helping a bunch of people in silly masks with ridiculous looking weapons, working for a man in a bowler hat and a mysterious woman, and he was now going to need to rely on unscoped shots from his rifle should anything come around the corner and surprise him.

He paused briefly.

It wasn't really that different from working at RED.

Momentarily, he remained paused, and in thought, before the sudden wash of thrusters flew over his head and landed past a few containers, presumably in the middle of the shipping port. If there was enough space to land an aircraft, then that probably meant long sightlines: Perfect. Face picked his feet up into a light jog, making his way to a position where he could see over to the jet. From what he could see, Roman was stood ordering a few White Fang thugs around behind the jet, and in the cockpit, Cinder sat with a calm expression. Upon sighting Face standing near some barrels, she almost smiled to him and gave a gentle nod of recognition, to which Face responded to by tipping his hat.

Just then, movement.

On a cargo crate near where Roman was standing, he could barely make out a shadowy figure creeping along the top of the containers. Quickly, Face slung his rifle over his shoulder, turned, and ran up to the edge of a nearby container, leaping up and grabbing the ledge so he could turn and jump over to another box. Barely getting both feet on top of it, he pushed himself up and ran up to the next crate off to the side, running towards it and using his boots to get up it slightly, allowing him to grab the top edge. Pulling himself up, he unslung his rifle, crouched and turned back to where the situation was unfolding. Over near where he once stood tall, Roman was now having a blade held to his throat by a young woman with black hair and cat ears. She couldn't have even been eighteen, looking at her, but she had cat ears and a knife, so to a trained hunter, that translates as 'target'. Raising his gun, Face steadied the crosshairs all the way across the yard and settled them firmly on the girl's head, between her almost glowing yellow eyes. She seemed to be saying something to the White Fang members, and they seemed almost as though they were considering it as Cinder took off in the jet, presumably to lead support troops to the location. But they were irrelevant to Face: He had a target, now.

Roman grimaced.

He had definitely been in a better position.

If only there were, oh, a Sniper to hand, to perhaps blow this brat's brains out and let him proceed with his day?

Goddamn Earthborn, never should have paid him that much.

Face steadied his aim, and held his breath. As the girl looked up to witness the arrival of several more jets, it seemed Roman had spotted Face. He frowned, and nodded in the direction of the Sniper, prompting Face to grin in an almost predatory way as he squeezed the trigger. The familiar recoil of his Sniper Rifle slammed against his shoulder, but he kept as steady as he could to ensure he'd hit his target. The loud report of the rifle signalled that he'd fired, but the girl's reaction to being shot in the head was...different.

To Face's undying surprise, she took the bullet and staggered back, releasing her sword from Roman's throat and grabbing her forehead as Roman ducked down. The White Fang members nearby were quick to attempt to open fire, however this girl was faster than Face had ever seen before: She gracefully leapt over the fired rounds, avoiding streams of bullets and following up by throwing her sword. It had a string of some kind tied to it, but before Face could even begin to question its efficiency, it _fired_. Just like a pistol, it fired out a bullet that took down one of the White Fang before the recoil sent it the other way. She used this to her advantage, somehow firing it again and sending it arcing through the air as a deadly windmill. Face shook himself of the awe and quickly loaded another round and took aim. She may have been able to create a kickass weapon, but she was also stood still.

Face's favourite kind of target.

Steadying his sights on her torso, he pulled the trigger once again, only for the girl to perform something Face would once have thought of as impossible. Seemingly detecting the bullet, she span to the side and _dodged it_, following up by catching her gun-boomerang and pointing it at where Face was standing. The Sniper grimaced and quickly loaded another round.

"That bitch can't hit me from over there..." he chuckled to himself, raising his gun once again to take another shot. However, to his surprise, she pulled the trigger on her tiny pistol again, and this time rounds pinged off a crate behind Face. He quickly recoiled and ducked, diving to the side and off the container. He landed hard on his back, but he'd had worse, and that wasn't important. The girl continued firing at him, and he scrambled back, finally opting to roll off the container and into the alley beneath. This time, he landed on his feet, and leaned against the nearest object to catch his breath. "Shit..." he murmured. "Guess she can." Frowning, and listening for the distant sound of metal striking metal in what was likely a sword duel of some kind, Face gathered himself, and quickly began to run in the direction of the fighting.

He hadn't fought anybody for a while, so he figured that now would be the ideal time to start again.

After a few minutes of circling, it was apparent that he could probably get the jump on the little bitch. She was preoccupied with fighting Roman in a duel of blade and cane, so if he waited for her to get further away, then he could get something done. Carefully, he stooped low and began to creep up on her, waiting for the right moment to strike as Roman deflected her blows. Once he was only a few meters behind her, his chance arose: Roman flicked her sword out of the way, and followed up by bringing up his cane in a quick smack to her face, staggering the woman back a few feet in surprise. At this point, Face stood, grabbed her by the shoulder to force her to look him in the eyes, and threw as much of his weight as he could into one, almighty right hook that knocked her straight off her feet and onto the ground with a loud thud. She groaned in pain, struggled slightly, then exhaled as she closed her eyes. Face frowned and looked at Roman, who was gently dusting off his coat. "I bloody well hope that didn't kill her," he said flatly. "If it did, then I'll have to start punching people more and I don't think my knuckles could take that sort of punishment." Roman just threw his head back and laughed, leaning on his cane.

"Well, at least you came through in the end," he sighed. "Could've been worse, she might have slit my throat at the start."

"It's called timing," Face retorted, tapping the woman on the foot to see if she was dead. Fortunately, she was alive, and Face noticed that the cat ears she had were indeed real. At least now it would only be an animal abuse lawsuit for knocking her lights out rather than an assault case. "It looks more professional, and it gets things done more efficiently in some cases."

"Did it do that in this case?" Roman asked bluntly.

"Not a bleedin' chance." Face said casually. He looked down on her. "Was that really our only opposition? A hippy catgirl? The fuck is this: Japan?"

"Hmm." Roman made the quiet noise as he looked over the teenage girl in the black clothes. "You're right."

"I am?" Face's ears pricked up. "Shit. No. Please don't say we're in Japan. I don't like the Half-Zatoichi as it is, I don't want to visit a place where they all use that fucking abomination." Roman groaned.

"No, no," he dismissed with a wave of his hand. "You're right that it's strange she came alone. She must have brought support of some description." Before Face could formulate an answer, something dropped down in front of him. Both men pause, and looked down to see a banana peel sitting on the floor between them. Frowning, they promptly looked up, only to have to jump back quickly as a new attacker landed in front of them. Face was reaching back to grab his Kukri when the newcomer suddenly swung back what looked like a flintlock pistol on a chain and (possibly inadvertently) smacked Face in the forehead with it. The Sniper flew back a few feet, crashing down on the ground after a brief flight and landing on his back. Groaning, he made every attempt he could to get back up and into the fight, but his body simply refused to co-operate.

Wincing in pain and letting out a drawn out groan, Face let unconsciousness grip him as his vision went completely black.

After what felt like several days, Face awoke to the feeling of being yanked off the ground and to his feet. His vision slowly began to come back to him as he opened his eyes, and judging by the sudden warmth nearby, something must have happened after he went out. Blinking away the last remnants of the unconscious wall of black, Face took a look around whilst being guided along by two mysterious figures that held him as though he had been injured.

Simply by looking around, Face could reduce that the raid didn't go to plan: At least two of the jets that had arrived now lay on the ground as twisted, burning wrecks, with what seemed to be fire crews attempting to put out the flames. A few of the containers seemed to be gone, too: Roman's men must have managed to nab a few before they had to retreat. Face wasn't even sure who'd really won. Suddenly, something prodded him in the back.

"Keep moving," a voice ordered. Well, at least now Face knew that _he_ didn't win. And his knuckles were still hurting from when he laid the smackdown on the hippy catgirl. Face made a mocking 'pfft' at the threat.

"What, you gonna shoot me?" he asked as he was dragged down an alley between a few cargo crates that seemed to go towards a group of police cars.

"We're not allowed to shoot you, by law," the gunman replied as they exited the shipping containers to see a few police cars, and a group of young women (and someone Face was assuming to be the asshole guy that smashed him one in the forehead) sitting on a few boxes and talking. As the officers guided Face towards the police cars, one person in the group, a teenager with white hair and white clothes, caught sight of him and went silent. The others followed her example eventually, all glaring daggers at Face.

"That's him," said the black-haired catgirl from earlier. "He's the guy that Torchwick had helping him." This statement from the catgirl (Who was now sporting a perfect black eye) prompted a slightly taller blonde girl to march over to Face, ignoring the other teenagers attempting to stop her. Once right in front of Face, the police officers escorting him stepped back slightly, leaving the Sniper standing with his hands cuffed behind his back.

"You punched my teammate?" she asked, glaring at him. Face nodded, keeping the same shit-eating smirk he'd had on since the officers had grabbed him.

"Would've stabbed her in the head, but I just couldn't do that to a teenager," he laughed, before narrowing his eyes at the blonde in a way that prompted her to recoil in slight fear. "But if she weren't just a teenager, I'd have beat her for _hours_. I'd have pulled that gun from her broken bloody fingers and shot out her kneecaps with it just to watch her try and crawl back to freedom. But, I'd let her live, because I'm a nice guy. I show _mercy_. I wanted to her dead, she'd be nothing but a rotting corpse floating in the sea by now. I'm a professional, kid, I do my job as I see fit. And if I hurt more people along the way, I'll gladly take a detour to my objective."

This was more than enough for blondie. Before anybody could stop her, she clenched her fist, gritting her teeth, and threw a punch straight onto Face's jaw. It seemed to carry enough force to nearly knock him over, but he caught himself with his left knee in a low position. _"_**You stay the hell away from my friends.**" she snarled. Face just grinned in a mocking way, and as the officers grabbed him again to take him to the cars, as he went past the group, he welled up some blood that had gone into his mouth and spat it at them. Most of them recoiled from the red jet of gore as the Sniper walked away chuckling maniacally.

"I've taken worse hits from a Fan o' War, you little cunts!" he laughed, as the officers uncuffed him, moved the handcuffs around the front, and placed them on his lap, before pushing him into the backseat of the vehicle. The blonde girl remained standing, glaring at Face even as the car left down the road.

And as the car drove away, the teenagers at the docks were certain they could still hear his dark, almost evil laugh ringing through the air.

The light slammed on over Face's head, but the effects were negated by his slightly cracked sunglasses and hat brow. Instead of wincing as the interrogation officers had expected him to, he remained with a slight frown on his face, looking the officer on the other side of the steel table dead in the eyes. The man interrogating him had nothing about him that even remotely scared Face. He had faced down angry tigers, black bears, and packs of wolves, surviving every time using his wits and a machete. So, a man with closely-cropped hair, stern features, and an office shirt and trousers wasn't going to even faze him. The man seemed like this was his job, so Face figured he might indulge him as his interrogator shined a lamp in his face in the dark room. "So, Torchwick's hiring extra muscle, huh?" He began, narrowing his eyes at the Sniper in front of him. "You don't look that tough to me. You're just another petty crook, just a stone in the shoe of Torchwick's ga-"

"Ten thousand, four hundred and thirty eight," Face interrupted. The officer paused, looking at him.

"What was that, sunshine?" he asked mockingly, leaning in and putting a hand to his ear as though listening. "That was a big number for such a small crook. That how much he was paying you to work with the White Fang?" Face looked at him, and laughed.

"No," he chuckled darkly, the light above casting a sinister shadow over Face's eyeline and giving him the look of a truly crazed killer. "That was my kill count from my fifteen years of experience as a Mercenary for Reliable Excavation and Demolitions incorporated." The interrogator and his companion in the room nearly burst out laughing at the ridiculous statement. Over ten thousand kills? That was absurd! Not even that number of people live in the Northwest of Vale!

Suddenly, their laughing was interrupted by a low chuckling. Casting a glance over to their 'victim', they could see his shoulders moving gently up and down as he looked down at the floor, and he was _laughing_.

"Hey, pal, what's so funny?" The interrogator marched over, slid the table out of the way with a sudden violence, and grabbed Face by the collar. "You sayin' that you've murdered people before? You think this is somethin' to smile about? Do you even know where you are, you low-life thug?" Face rolled his eyes at the term.

"I think you should call me a Gun for Hire," he corrected. "I was paid money, I did jobs, I got kills. I don't care where I am now, but as far as you're concerned I'm just another petty criminal. As far as my service history in the New Mexican Badlands is concerned, I'd be considered as one of the most dangerous Mercenaries this side of Saxton Hale." The two interrogators paid no heed to his later statements, looking at Face in awe. The man standing over him backed up slightly, leaning back further to examine Face properly before turning to his companion. They mouthed a few words, a brief exchange at most, but Face just looked at both of them with contempt. "Am I missing something here?" he asked flatly, snapping their attention back to him. There was a pause, and the first interrogator looked him up and down.

"You're Earthborn?" he asked. Face nodded. The results were instantaneous as the officers walked right over to Face, went behind the chair he was seated in, and uncuffed him. Immediately, Face brought his hands to his front and began rolling his hands around in a circle, just to get feeling back in them as he looked at the officers. The second man that had been at the back of the room crouched next to Face whilst his partner went away, pulling out a small device and beginning to tap away on its screen. The guy closest to the Sniper put a hand on his shoulder.

"Alright, sir, you're going to need to understand that the Vale Police Department meant no harm in bringing you here," he began, Face still looking at him like he was insane, "This was the result of a misunderstanding, and due to your unintentional summoning to Remnant you will be required to remain in this prison until we are able to identify a method for you to return to Earth. There is nothing to be worried about." There was a moment of silence.

"...how long did your fucking training take if you had to learn bullshit statements like that?" Face asked bluntly. "Is this your equivalent of the whole 'you have the right to shut your mouth or I'll blow your head off with this gun' thing that Mann Co. funded cops say?"

"No, we have that here," the officer replied, remaining in a crouched position next to the Sniper. "However, this means you are going to have to remain in a prison cell until we have a way to send you back home, or until suitable accommodation can be found for you."

"So I'm basically still going to prison?"

"Yes."

"Bollocks."

**A few weeks pass.**

Face's walk back to his new cell was rather...insightful. The area he'd been designated in the multi-storey jail was near the top, had a window, a personal door guard, a bed (hell of a lot better than the Steel facility's 'beds'), a mirror, personal toilet and sink, plus a small cabinet to store things in. While Face had brought his equipment backpack with him, it was likely on the jet that Cinder was piloting, and if that one had crashed that dashed his chances of his other weapons being available, and also his plans to eventually have sexual relations with Cinder, since she probably died if her jet crashed.

Shame.

But his cell wasn't so bad.

It was mostly the walk back up there from the cafeteria and outdoors that annoyed him. Other inmates would often yell abuse as the 'new meat' could freely walk anywhere in the prison so long as his guard knew where he was going and radioed out to all other guards that he was moving about. Face didn't mind: The occasional BLU with the voice of a child had given him more than enough resistance to such incendiary comments. If anything, the abuse Face would throw back would sometimes be _worse_ than what they said first.

It had only been a few weeks since he'd first been placed under guard, and so far, he didn't mind being behind bars. Yes, he had been given a comfy cell, as per the apparent norm for the arrival of an 'Earthborn', and he was even allowed to keep his clothes. All they did was take away his weapons and munitions, and apparently even then they were being studied for their functions. Face just refused to believe they hadn't ever heard of Mann Co. It was the biggest company in the world!

Then again, he wasn't on Earth, apparently.

So to the few who asked about weapons, he simply told them how Mercenary warfare happened on Earth and the crowds of inmates and guards alike gathered to listen to this mysterious warrior from another world.

The inmates were willing to listen, and Face's favourite story that Medic once told him, how he lost a Medical License, got some pretty loud laughs whenever it was told. It was as though these people had never actually _been_ in combat of any kind.

But Face didn't mind.

Upon reaching the corridor that housed his cell, Face gave his door guard a nod. Jerry nodded back silently as Fave approached, and opened the heavy steel door. "Evening, Jer," Face said politely as he went in. The door closed behind him and Jerry opened the metal slat that allowed people to see inside the cell. Jerry was quite a young man, and apparently watching over Face was his first major task since beginning his job at the Vale prison. He was rather polite, but knew when to take charge, so Face could respect him.

"Evening, Face," he greeted through the door. "You have a message from the top brass, surprisingly."

"Ah, the guys up top, my favourite new friends," Face said in a flat, monotone voice as he took his sunglasses, hat, and jacket off. He folded the jacket, opened his bedside cabinet, and placed it down, putting his hat and sunglasses on top. Then, he jumped onto his bed in a reclined position, crossing his booted legs and putting his hands behind his head as he stared at the same spot of ceiling he had been looking at for the past few weeks. "What brilliant and fun adventure have they been up to today, I wonder?"

"Apparently, they've allowed you to have a visitor later," Jerry replied. "Someone is supposedly coming to see you in relation to the docks at nine o' clock. Sounds important."

"Oh, _wow!_" Face cheered sarcastically, half-heartedly raising an arm in a lazy show of appreciation before letting it flop down onto his stomach. "Visitors are fun. I wonder if they'll bring me a cake with a file? That'd be funny, because I can't be arsed to file things and they'll have wasted their money." Jerry chuckled at the comment.

"Can't really see anybody bringing you a cake," he replied. "I don't think any of the people of Vale even know you're here. As far as they're concerned, that docks incident was just a White Fang operation in conjunction with Roman Torchwick's gang. Nobody would even think there were Mercenaries involved, people are too naïve these days."

"Well, at least I'll get to meet these people personally." Face checked his watch. Eight forty five. He still had fifteen minutes to chat with Jerry and get his gear on.

First, though, he decided to wash his face.

Things in the cafeteria got a little...stabby, between one of Junior's boys and a White Fang hate preacher, and Face had been sat just next to them the whole time, yelling directions on where Junior's henchman should stab next.

Sure, it was prison.

Didn't mean Face couldn't enjoy it.

At nine o' clock sharp, footsteps became apparent down the hallway. Through the gap in the metal door, Face noticed that Jerry visibly straightened up, and that pretty much meant he had to slip his jacket, hat, and sunglasses on before the people showed up. Face got up, and walked over to the cabinet, opening it and removing his usual apparel. As he put on his Chronomancer jacket and looked through the door slat from the angle he was at, he could see a pair of large boobs.

Good.

Face was great with women

Except that teenager at the docks, because that'd be weird.

"You're here to see Mr. Face, ma'am?" Jerry asked.

"Yes," a rather formally toned woman replied, punctuated by the sound of the screen being tapped on a Scroll tablet, "I'd be labelled under Goodwytch, G." Jerry paused and looked at his wristplate, where he had taped the day's orders to the metal on his arm.

"Goodwytch, G..." he murmured. He finally tapped the sheet of paper. "Ah, name's here. Go right on in, ma'am." Jerry reached over and grabbed the door handle, the large steel door creaking open and allowing a woman to enter. Face quickly slipped his hat and sunglasses on before she looked at him, and he stood by his bed in a neutral pose. 'Goodwytch' was intimidating, Face could give her that. Whilst Cinder was slightly smaller than his six foot one form, this woman towered over Face at what looked to be over six foot six. She was dressed like a secretary; relatively tight-fitting white shirt, black skirt, and black leggings with high heels. She had a small pair of glasses poised over her eyes, and her green eyes were narrowed at Face constantly as she looked him over. She was a natural blonde, though, which Face found impressive when considering how vibrantly that blonde girl's hair was glowing when she bashed him in the face at the docks.

Good times.

"Mr. Face, I believe." She didn't make any effort to introduce herself.

"That's me," Face replied, raising a hand and not changing his expression. "And you are?"

"Looking for a reason why I shouldn't just leave you here to rot and never bother you again," she shot back. Face raised a brow.

"Cheers for that, good to know you trust me."

"Fortunately for you, I have someone with me who'd like to speak with you."

"I have two visitors?" Face muttered as he scratched the back of his head. "Lucky day." Just as he was reaching for a cup of water that he'd left on the table near him, there was the sudden, unmistakeable sound of a Disciplinary Action hitting the table, and Face whipped his hand back in unbridled terror. "AH, FUCK NO." he cried. Goodwytch was stood with a whip she had obtained from somewhere, the end cracked down where Face's hand nearly was. She was looking at him with a raised brow.

"Really?" she sighed. "You claim to have killed ten thousand men and you squeal when faced with a little whip?"

"You wouldn't _believe_ how dangerous whips were back home," Face said quickly. "Fucking things could hit you when you were behind the guy using it. Stung like a bitch, too." Goodwytch rolled her eyes.

"Nevertheless, you had better not make any sudden moves when he's here. This man's life is worth more than all those you claim to have taken, and if you so much as try to get a hit on him I will whip you into submission. Are we clear?" Face looked at her with a neutral expression.

"Sorry, but that seriously sounded kinky as fuck," he said flatly, causing Jerry to start stifling laughs on the other side of the door. Goodwytch was about to make a counter argument saying how she had standards, but was interrupted by a gentle cough behind her. Immediately, she backed away into the darker corner of the room with her Scroll tablet out, and kicked a chair up to the other side of Face's table as she went.

Standing in the doorway was an older looking man, probably in his late forties or mid fifties. He had grey hair and glasses, and his clothes consisted of a green suit with a green scarf alongside it. He was holding a mug of what looked like coffee, and to Face's surprise, a bottle of what seemed to be beer. "Good evening," he said calmly. "You must be Mr. Face."

"Your assistant is doing her job well, then," Face replied smartly, glaring daggers at Goodwytch over the man's shoulder as the two blokes sat at the table. Once seated, the visitor placed his mug onto the table, along with the beer, and pushed the latter towards Face.

"Here." The man's expression didn't change. "I presumed you might have wanted one of these after all you've been through." Face looked at it, then cautiously picked it up and raised his right boot onto his lap, cracking the bottle cap using the steel toe of his Tooth Kicker boot. He gave it a small swill around the bottle, finally deciding to drink some.

Beautiful.

"Well, thank you, Mr...?" Face asked, swallowing his beer as he extended a hand.

"Professor Ozpin," the man replied. Once they'd finished shaking hands, they got to business. "So, from what I understand, you were employed by a certain gangster we have had running around Vale, and you were brought from Earth to Remnant."

"Apparently that's what happened," Face shrugged. "I remember getting on a plane of some kind on top of an apartment building in downtown New York, then when I got off I was definitely nowhere near New York. And I'd only just been fired from my Mercenary job the day before, so I figured that so long as the job paid, I'd do it." He paused, looking at the bottle of beer. "Bloody big mistake, that was." Ozpin made a 'hmm' sound.

"And so you were a Mercenary before coming here?" he asked.

"Fifteen years of experience," Face nodded. "Mostly in and around the Badlands area of New Mexico. Before that, I had a hunting and dangerous pest control career, then some army training experience, then came the fifteen years of Mercenary work. I operated as a Sniper, which wasn't really as the name implies."

"How so?"

"We...didn't work like conventional Snipers. Most of our targets were moving towards us, at high speed, and most of the time were shooting at us. It was our job to defend control points from these guys, so there was quite a lot of close combat on the point. Most Snipers were the opposite of what was implied: Quite often, we were in the thick of the fight."

"Interesting. And your hunting career?"

"I dealt with large animals that pest control couldn't sort out. Sometimes it was something safe, like a deer that needed to be caught, but most of the time some idiot had let a panther loose in a town centre and it had eaten his hands. That's where I came in: I'd either shoot it, punch it to death, or stab it to death. Afterwards, part of my contract allowed me to skin and eat the animal, so I didn't pay much for food. The hunting otherwise was as you'd expect; go out in the forest, stab some tigers to death, skin and eat them, that sort of thing."

In the back of the room, Goodwytch was staring worriedly at Face. Ozpin, however, pressed on.

"Interesting. You know, Remnant does have a pest problem. Creatures of Grimm. Heard of them?" Face looked up in thought.

"A few guys in the cafeteria mentioned them once. Said they were basically just big, evil versions of regular animals."

"They're right, if it's a rudimentary description you're after."

"But I assume this is leading up to something?" Face asked. Ozpin smiled.

"What gave you that impression?"

"Well," Face began, "First, you come looking for someone unimportant to your interests and find them in prison." He raised the bottle of beer. "Then, give them something to earn their trust. You inquire about their past, and make it seem like the conversation is flowing naturally towards a subject of your choosing. So, Professor Ozpin," Face asked, looking him dead in the eye. "What is that topic?" There was a brief pause.

"I am a head teacher at the prestigious academy for Huntsmen and Huntresses. We teach warriors how to defend humanity from Grimm and other forces. As it stands, our teaching staff is spread thinly, and we have no backup in case any teacher falls ill." Ozpin sipped his coffee. "I believe that you may be able to fill this role. This is a difficult choice to make, so I reccomend that you take your ti-"

"OK, when do I start?" Face replied casually. Ozpin sighed, and smiled.

_'At least he's eager.'_


	3. Better than Auto-Balance

"Hell of a lot better than London public transport," Face whistled as he stepped onto the bus, Jerry in tow in civilian clothing but with a police badge and a pistol held ready in case Face tried to make a run for it. The civilians already on board were immediately giving intrigued looks to the two men that had just stepped onto the bus, but outside of a few whispers that sprang up around the already quiet vehicle, Face didn't see any reason to pay heed to them. They were wearing normal clothes, and from what he'd been told, it was a weekend. Naturally, people would be out in their thousands to enjoy the summer sun, go shopping, and generally just enjoy themselves, which Face almost envied. He hadn't been able to properly go shopping in years, instead having to rely on Mann Co.'s mail order service if he wanted new weapons and hats. Sure, other Mercs around the place liked leaving stuff on the floor when they died, and Face was quite happy to take their hats and guns then sell them to guys on his team, but it wasn't going to be as satisfactory as just...browsing a shop. Stopping to look at things and consider them. Picking things up and trying them on. But it wasn't really something he cared about at that point in time.

He was being escorted to this 'Beacon' academy by a guard of his choosing. He would be taken to an airport, flown over to the school, given a tour and a few days to get settled in, then he was to be teaching a class of first-year students since their usual Professor was out capturing Grimm for educational reasons. Naturally, Face's chosen escort was Jerry, because Face liked Jerry and it was just like in the old war camp movies where the American soldiers called the Prisoner of War camp guards 'Jerry', as a derogatory term due the fact that many Germans were called 'Bill', and also because the words 'Ben' and 'Jerry' reminded them of the Great Ice Cream Factory Bombing of 1918 where Franklin Roosevelt personally blew up every ice cream factory in Germany, with the explosions destroying the recipes to several classic flavours that truly demoralized Germany and forced their surrender in 1919.

Jerry was also carrying Face's guns in a metal carry case, so the Sniper was constantly flicking his eyes back at the Guard to make sure his weapons weren't being treated badly.

Regardless, Face was rambling mentally as the bus wheezed its way down winding streets. He was looking out the window, and seeing what there really was to look at as he went past. It was nothing but shops for a while, occasionally passing a plaza or museum, but when it came to the airport after a few stops and a twenty minute bus ride, Face was truly impressed. The building housed rows of large platforms that were raised above the sea on metal and concrete stilts, with a sleek white metal and glass roof over each platform to keep commuters from getting wet in rain. On each, there were rows of benches and glass walls that displayed what Face could only assume to be travel times, and even the staircase leading up to the platform was quite grand. Slowly, the bus halted, prompting most of the occupants to stand and prepare to exit the vehicle. That meant people were mostly waiting for Face and Jerry to exit so they felt safer, even though the men had said nothing to anyone on the bus. One might even have gone so far as to say that they looked like criminals with the way they were standing.

Face gave his shoulders a brief roll, feeling the satisfying click of back bones in the process, then letting his hands go freely by his sides as the doors hissed open. Calmly, Face stepped out onto the pavement in front of the airport building, then after a further analysis began making his way up the stairs. As he went, there were faster footsteps behind him as Jerry caught up. "Not a bad place," Face mused as his guard caught up. "Back home, airports were shit and the shops sold awful stuff for high prices. At least, that was when I last went to an airport."

"Yeah?" Jerry asked. "And how long ago was that?" Face looked up at the brow of his hat in thought as they began to ascend the second set of steps.

"Ah, what day is it today?" he asked.

"Saturday," Jerry replied.

"Then it was fifteen years, four months, and nine days since I last visited an airport." Jerry raised his brows in surprise. He was a rather handsome man, with the almost generic young soldier face and blonde buzz-cut so his helmet would fit on his head smoothly. Across his cheek, he had a small scar where he'd been hit in the face with a plate during a prison riot, but it was hardly noticeable if you would speak to him. Sometimes, Face even forgot he had the scar.

"That long, huh?" Jerry whistled. The two men finally came to a pause in front of a holographic timetable and began to scan its contents. They'd been given tickets for the five o' clock flight to Beacon academy, but they still needed to know the platform required to even get there. Suddenly, Face leaned forward and tapped a line of text.

'**BEACON ACADEMY 5:00 FLIGHT, PLATFORM 7A'**

"Perfect," Jerry nodded as he picked up Face's gun case again. "Let's get over there." The two men turned around, looking down the fixed ceiling signs listing platform numbers. Upon sighting the white-backed sign labelled '7A' with an arrow pointing left, they began to move in the direction.

And, as fast as exposition could happen, the airship arrived, Jerry and Face boarded, and the journey had been completed. The whole process took about two hours, meaning that the sun was just starting to set across the horizon and that Beacon Academy was bathed in the warm orange glow of evening sunlight. The other people that got off the airship often had some teenager waiting on the platform to greet them, and judging by the larger buildings in the distance, Face assumed that students would live at Beacon and their family would visit them at certain times, just like college that Face never went to. However, rather than being greeted by anybody, Face had already been told to make his own way to the teachers' accommodation building, place any belongings in the room, then head up to go and see Ozpin in his office.

Considering appearance was everything around this place, Face could only assume that the headmaster of a school this size would have his office as the flagship part of the school: The huge tower in the center of the campus was most likely Ozpin's office. But Face was getting ahead of himself: First, he needed to drop his gear off in his room, and the teachers' accommodation building was on the campus at the end of a long path leading up to the school. Either side, it was flanked with vast pools of water, and in the center of the path there was almost a 'rest stop' with a fountain and benches, in case someone got tired from walking to and from the landing pad. Afterwards, it was another long walk onto main school grounds. Around the entire area, however, there were colossal, pantheon-like towers with large bridges over them, seemingly to circle off the entire school from the rough-looking surrounding area of hills. In the distant campus, the buildings towered over these pantheons, with larger ones seemingly built as school dorms at the forefront of the school.

"Hell of a walk," Face sighed as they passed the fountain. "Not that I mind, of course, but Jesus Christ, this is a long-ass march just to get in."

"I suppose it must whittle down the students arriving for the first time," Jerry smirked, zipping up his black hoodie. "If you don't make it down the path, then you probably weren't worthy of going into the school anyway."

"I suppose so," Face mused, "But to visitors, this is just...wow."

"Exercise is taken very seriously here at Beacon," Jerry laughed. "If you're over four hundred pounds and sweating on arrival, then it's a hundred pushups."

"Truly, America is doomed," Face chuckled. "But anyway, what're you meant to be doing when I head off to see Ozpin?"

"Well, as it turns out, I've got to head straight back. I've been ordered to watch over Junior for the night: He's been arrested again for serving a minor."

"_Again?_" Face groaned. "Goddammit, Junior, get your shit together. Not that bad, anyway, he's actually quite a nice guy if you get to know him."

"Is he? Heard he rents out thugs to gangs."

"Apparently. Though I must say, he's got nothin' on the woman in purple: RED Mercs on transfer all said that they were employed by a woman in purple. Same one, too. She was practically a Pimp for Mercenaries."

"But you never knew who she really was?"

"Bingo. Pretty sure I heard some guys on BLU team discussing it once, since their voices echoed around the place when everybody was out. The last thing one of them mentioned before I punched him in the face at twenty-eight-hundred feet per second was that all BLUs that _he_ had encountered were employed by the woman in purple, _and_ that she was paying them, too."

"So your job must have been a cover-up. If they're to be believed," Jerry murmured, scratching his faint stubble thoughtfully. "Still: What could she get by creating two teams and making them fight each other? She'd be paying for ammunition, food, wages, supplies...everything. It's just a waste of money."

"Unless they were funded by a higher source, which I assume involves TF Industries and Mann Co., two biggest suppliers of trained Mercenaries and silly hats in the world." The men stopped, and looked at each other, then around their current position. They were standing in the middle of the nearly empty path leading into the school, Ozpin's tower looking tall about a hundred metres away, and the staff accommodation was, according to a nearby sign, at the end of a smaller path that branched off from the main entrance through a grassy knoll. A set of trees covered the top of the path with leaves acting as a natural roof, with the warm orange glow of the sun slipping through gaps in the foliage. After a moment of further silence, Face looked to Jerry. "Remind me to never go into an analysis of my old employers," he said flatly, before turning to move down the path. "C'mon, let's get the gun case dropped off, since I'm certain carrying that many guns is bad for you."

"Hey, it's no bother to me," Jerry shrugged as they moved towards the building at the end of the breakaway path. "You got me a day off work, and I got to visit Beacon. I planned to come here as a kid, I just...wasn't skilled enough." Face shook his head, tipping his hat slightly to stop sunlight from going through the gap in the top of his sunglasses.

"You wanna see someone with no skill, you should have seen some of the transfers we had at times," he smiled. "Apparently it was a plan by the guys up top to create the perfect, order-following Mercenary. Test-tube grown, trained to kill almost from birth. Only problem was that they were almost all complete idiots. They'd normally be wearing tired old top hats, which were mostly given out to Mercs when they managed to kill someone loads of times without them getting revenge. That, and their combat techniques were poorly thought out and mostly revolved around gloating for ten minutes after one kill." He looked back at Jerry. "Not really scientific breakthroughs, but I guarantee you're probably a thousand times better than them."

"Comforting," Jerry groaned. Finally, the men had reached the building. Upon looking at the size of it in comparison to most other dorms and class buildings they'd seen, it was little more than a small block of flats. It made sense, Face thought as he pushed the doors open, since you wouldn't exactly need a few thousand or hundred teachers for any number of students. Well, yes, maybe over a hundred depending on classes and their sizes, also the resources and classrooms available, but he supposed that for a school of Beacon's size the teacher numbers have to ca.p off at 150-200. Face looked around as he entered: Presumably, this was the teachers' lounge, due to the sofas, coffee machine, TV constantly displaying the news, and the teachers in the room, that were lounging.

There were only three of them, and Face recognized one of them as that one bitch from the other night. Goodwytch? Badbitch? Whatever. The other two were both quite different: The first was a fairly tall man with green hair (Face didn't like the amount of hair dye they must have used in Vale) and circular glasses that had a strange opaque quality to them. His white office shirt was quite unkempt, half-tucked in with the collar still standing up to display the golden tie around his neck. He had black trousers and brown shoes, and was standing up with his hand behind his back watching the news as he sipped a thermos of coffee. The last man was quite the opposite to the other: He was reclined over the lavish red couch with his legs crossed, and his maroon outfit with gold trim held a more organised tone. He was wearing a pair of black boots inside, so Face was assuming that the guy was a hunter of some description. However, most noticeable was that his eyes were invisible under his grey parted hair, thick grey eyebrows, and manly grey moustache.

Face squinted slightly at the majesty of it.

Even Saxton Hale himself would be proud of such fantastic facial hair.

They all remained distracted by the events going on over the news, so Face announced his arrival as elegantly as he could. Walking up beside Goodwytch, he made no noise, surprising her all the more as he stood right next to her and looked at her. "G'day," he said calmly, causing Glynda to yelp in suprise and for the two men to look in his direction. "Apparently I was meant to come here?" After a moment where Goodwytch contemplated destroying his pelvic existence with a few good kicks, she straightened up and sighed.

"Ah, Mr. Face," she said in as calm a manner as she could muster. "You've arrived with your escort."

"He's got my guns, I can't ditch him," Face replied smoothly. "And from what I remember, he's being sent back once he's dropped my guns off in my room." Goodwytch sighed.

"Glynda?" Asked the man in the maroon outfit as he stood up to greet Face. "You never told us we were expecting company!" He extended a large hand to shake, which Face did and revealed just how crushing the man's grip was as their hands moved up and down. "Professor Peter Port, huntsman extraordinaire, at your service!"

"Face, ex-Mercenary and Sniper for hire, at your service." Port nodded his head in acknowledgement as he stepped back, allowing the taller green-haired man to step, or more accurately _teleport_ to his old position. He rapidly extended a hand as though he didn't even make a move to that position, prompting Face to wonder how strong that coffee was.

"Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck," he nearly yelled at three words per second. "I'm the history teacher for the first year and second year students, and I'm very excited to meet someone who looks to know some history himself!" Face nodded as he shook his hand.

"Studied it for a few years, and read mostly history books whilst I had free time back in the New Mexico Badlands, so I know a fair bit, yes." As the handshaking stopped, Oobleck and Port looked at Face in a manner of wondering about his sanity, until Goodwytch rolled her eyes and stepped in.

"I forgot to mention, this is the man that the White Fang employed to assist them during the dock raid a few weeks ago," she explained, turning their expressions from curiosity to slight concern and marginal rage. "He was kidnapped by Torchwick's men from Earth and brought here without his knowledge." Oobleck's expression immediately softened.

"MY GOODNESS!" he cried. "Dearest apologies, it must be terrible being away from home, I hope you've been comfortable whilst on Remnant?"

"It's been..." Face's mind flashed back to his prison cell. "...good, I suppose. My own room, meals every day, warm bed. Not too bad, thanks for asking." He gestured behind him. "This is Jerry, he's the guy that escorted me here."

Jerry gave a small wave with his free hand.

"So," Port began, "What brings you to our fine academy?"

"Well, apparently, in a few days there's a teacher that's going out to catch Grimm for educational resource reasons, and due to staff shortages I've been told I'm to fill his place whilst he's away." Port threw his head back and laughed, slapping a hand on Face's shoulder.

"That'd be _my_ lesson, m'boy!" he bellowed cheerfully. "I'm one of the best Grimm Trappers on Remnant, so it's my job to make sure the school's 'topped up', as it were. I'm certain the students will appreciate the trouble you went through to get this position, Mr. Face!"

"Hope so," Face tilted his head slightly. "Far as I remember, the kids here are some of the best in the business at what they do."

"You'd be correct in saying that," Goodwytch nodded. "Now come along, let's get your weapons into your room and I'll show you to Ozpin's office."

Face nodded, bid farewell to Oobleck and Port, and Jerry followed them upstairs with the large metal case of guns in hand.

After several hours, the weapons had been placed on the racks provided, Jerry had already headed off to the airpad to catch the next airship to Vale, and Goodwytch (Who Face now knew was called Glynda) was his new escort, taking him to Ozpin's office. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, meaning the only lighting around the surprisingly empty campus came from scattered streetlights that dotted the sides of the path. It certainly made Face look strange, since he was wearing a hat designed to shield from bright Australian sunbeams and a pair of dark sunglasses, but Glynda saw no real reason to complain. After all, she didn't much like Face, so seeing him walk into a lamppost due to his impaired visibility would certainly brighten up her day.

"So," Face began as they passed a tall dormitory building with most of its lights on, "Is there anything I need to know about the class I'm taking?" Glynda looked up.

_'Good question: Is there?'_

"Not...particularly," she replied, "Though I will mention these are top-tier students. Almost all of them are highly in touch with their Auras and Semblances, so you might notice how they would approach a situation differently." Face raised a brow.

"Alright, but I hope you don't mind me asking what 'Aura' and 'Semblance' mean?" Glynda almost stopped in confusion, before remembering the crucial fact that Face was from a place that had long lost its touch with Aura in general. She turned to her following companion, and gave a condescending smile.

"Certainly, let me explain," she said in what Face completely understood was an incredibly sarcastic manner. "Aura and Semblance are two truly important aspects of the lives and combat styles of Huntsmen and Huntresses. Aura is a projection of the soul, useable by most able huntsmen as a means of defence. The greater your soul, the more defensive you can be and the more hits you can withstand." Face suddenly understood how the girl at the docks had survived the headshot. That's a bloody good Aura.

"So like an Übercharge?" he asked. Glynda, being hopelessly uninformed on the ways that Mercenaries did battle, didn't question it.

"I wouldn't know." Noticing Face was about to begin explaining, probably using lots of expletives to make the point clear, she continued. "A Semblance, on the other hand, is important for other reasons. Many huntsmen bend their entire combat style around it. And each one is different. Some Semblances allow the user to run at high speed, some allow for strength, some offer a more illusion-based approach, and some allow complete bending of physics to the user's whim."

"Well, at least Mercenaries didn't have Semblances," Face whistled, scratching the back of his head as they entered the elevator up to Ozpin's tower. "Can't imagine how fucking difficult it'd be to hit a Scout with a super-speed semblance."

"Scout?" Glynda asked, raising a brow.

"Scout. I'm a Sniper, I filled one of nine roles on the battlefield. You had the Medic, the Soldier, the Spy, the Heavy, the Engineer, the Pyro, the Demoman, the Scout, and me, the Sniper. Each one did a different job on the team. Engineer built automated sentry guns and dispensers, Spy could disguise as members of the enemy team, sneak up, and then backstab them, Medic's medi-guns healed just about any wound you could ever sustain in combat, and Pyro..." He trailed off.

"And Pyro?"

Face looked at Glynda with a look she hadn't seen yet: Fear. He'd seen what Pyro could do, and obviously didn't want to talk about it. "We don't talk about Pyro." Glynda frowned, then nodded, tapping a few notes onto her Scroll as the two rode up in the lift. They were certainly an interesting duo standing beside each other: Glynda wore bright, (mostly) cheerful tones and seemed a lot more welcoming than Face's dark, gloomy black and red clothing. He seemed more like someone you'd cross the road to avoid as opposed to Glynda's almost motherly appearance.

Through curiosity, Glynda decided to observe Face in the elevator, not letting on that she was watching him. When he was in an enclosed space as opposed to outside, he seemed a fair bit less talkative, she noted, and he did look to have some level of interest in the technology around him. As she feverishly tapped away these notes on her Scroll, Face bent down slightly to examine the elevator panel. If she was describing it, he looked to be utterly bewildered by the Scroll recognition technology and touchscreen panel, but he didn't ask about it.

_'Typical man,'_ she thought, _'Wanting to find out for himself and not looking for help.'_

After a few more minutes where Glynda watched her 1960's companion being quite interested in modern Remnant technology, the lift slowed its ascent, and Glynda quickly pulled Face upright as the doors slipped open with a 'ding'. Immediately upon entering, Face saw Ozpin's desk across the room, the man himself sitting behind it with his hands bridged. The desk itself had a glass top, with constantly rotating cogs and gears beneath it for seemingly no purpose but decoration. However, this was furthered by the fact that Face could see much larger gears turning overhead, filling the room with metal clanking all the time. Face didn't think he'd have the patience to work in this room: The noise would drive him more insane than normal. Plus, he didn't ever want a desk job. The one thing Face did envy, however, was the view of almost the entirety of the school from this single office. As he and Glynda reached the desk, Face continued looking out the window. "Good view," he said calmly. Glynda shot him a look, but Ozpin shook his head at her.

"I suppose a good view is important to you," he replied.

"I guess you could say that. From this office alone, I could hit just about anybody outside their building or inside, depending on their visibility to me." Face scratched his stubble. "At a stretch? Might be able to hit the pilot of an airship approaching the landing pad from here. Of course, it all depends on wind, visibility, that kind of thing. So I envy this view." Ozpin smiled.

"One of the perks of my job," he said in his usual monotone voice, turning his chair slightly. "If I've been particularly busy one day, or have a difficult decision to make, I tend to look out of my window a lot. Clears my mind in a way I didn't think would be possible until I reached this new position."

"Hmm." Face finally stopped trying to think about wind and gravity compensation if he wanted to try and hit one of the janitors that was walking about cleaning the path almost half a mile away, and looked at Ozpin. "So, I've dropped my equipment off in the room I was ordered to, and, obviously, made it up here. What now?"

"To begin with, you won't have anything to do for the first three days." Ozpin brought up his scroll and began flicking through pages of what looked to be teaching timetables. "So if I were in your position, I would head down to the library after breakfast tomorrow and begin researching Grimm." Face nodded.

"So my lesson's got something to do with Grimm?" he asked. "What, like...teach them to fight?"

"You're going to be teaching students to survive," Ozpin corrected, adjusting his glasses yet keeping his expression neutral. "As you mentioned, you used to kill large, dangerous animals, and part of your payment was to be allowed to skin and eat them. The class you'll be teaching recently had an incursion with a few Ursas and Beowulves on a trip to the Forever Fall forest. While they were dealt with, they simply left the corpses for nature to destroy whilst they still had a day or two left in the forest. Upon return, a popular complaint was that supplies almost ran out and were used up faster than expected." He flicked his eyes up to meet Face's squinting glare that he often wore. "That's what you're going to prevent in future."

"Then you want me to teach them how to survive in the wilderness? They must have already learned that, right?" Face raised a brow, folding his arms.

"Not on the level I understand you can do it to. From the few Earthborns that have appeared in Remnant, the 'Osstrailiens' were the most tenacious, fearless, and absurd of them all." Face grinned.

"Aussies have a tendency to be hunters and not to wear shirts often, and also they have a solution to just about any situation that arises," he said almost proudly, closing his eyes and looking up in a noble manner. "The best solution is always to punch the living shit out of it." Glynda rolled her eyes as normal, and Ozpin almost looked as if he were considering it as a viable action plan. "Even though I'm only partially Australian, just like every other Sniper, I retain the good bits of being Australian, like punching things and having a sexy accent. Besides, they're kids. You can mold them. Manipulate them. Train them. Their brains can be hardwired to whatever you want them to do. And all it takes is a little teaching." Once again, the room went silent as the other two occupants stared in consideration and worry at the Sniper. "Being taught how to deal with animals by someone with even partially Australian blood is going to push these kids along real fast, I guarantee it."

"I certainly hope so." Ozpin stood, and reached behind him. As was reflex to seeing somebody reach behind them to an unseen place, Face quickly moved his hand to the place where his revolver holster would normally be, only to be both disappointed at the lack of gun and slightly embarrassed that he'd forgotten. However, rather than simply pulling out an Enforcer and putting a hole in Face's chest (As he'd had the unfortunate pleasure of experiencing in a Hong Kong Triad job two years before), Ozpin instead produced a small metal rectangle. It had darkened grey corners, a single split down the center with a yellow diamond shape, and a shiny black surface. "This is your Scroll, Professor Face. I'll be using it to keep in contact with you over your time here. Should anything occur to you or anyone else during a lesson, school-time, or free time, do not hesitate to call me and I will see what I can do to help." Face looked at the small device for a few seconds more, before cautiously accepting it and placing it in the inner left pocket of his jacket.

"Appreciate it," he nodded, and the room once again descended into silence. Face flicked his eyes between the two other teachers. "So, uh, is that all that we need to discuss?"

"Yes," Ozpin nodded. "You're free to go back to your room for the evening." Face nodded in return.

"If that's all, then I'll be off," he said calmly. "Ozpin." He tipped his hat to Ozpin. "Glynda." He tipped his hat to Glynda. She was tempted to give him the finger, as she had been within close contact with him for more than five minutes. Finally, Face turned, and began making his way over the room towards the exit lift. Upon reaching it, he flicked out his new Scroll, and pressed it against the sensor. It took a few moments until...

'_Good evening, Professor Face. The time is eight forty five PM. Going down to lobby.'_

"IT LIKES ME!" Face cheered, raising his arms over his head as the doors closed with a metallic clunk. A few more moments passed in Ozpin's office.

"I think you're going to regret this decision," Glynda said flatly, adjusting her glasses slightly and continuing to tap away on her Scroll. "I give it a week before he's killed." Ozpin turned his chair back to the window.

"No need to be so negative, Glynda," he replied calmly. "After all, he _is_ a professional."

"You honestly believe that?" she raised a brow. Ozpin sighed, watching the small figure of Face making his way back to the staff accommodation on the darkened path below.

"I think I'm going to have to."

The next morning, Face decided to skip breakfast, as per usual Mercenary routine. Often, they wouldn't have time for food in the morning, instead being awoken by the sound of the mysterious Announcer coming over the speakers to warn them that they had BLUs incoming. That meant two meals a day: Lunch, and dinner. For Heavy, that changed to fourteen meals a day if you were to consider how many goddamn sandwiches he could eat. But, Face was in the majority, so he walked straight past the food hall and made his way directly to the library. He was fully kitted out today; Revolver in holster, weapons belt hanging loosely over his waist with the SMG clipped onto his left hip, Kukri in his back sheath, and his beloved Sniper Rifle held by its strap over his shoulder. He looked like some kind of predator as he walked Beacon's grand halls, with the students he walked past giving hardly fleeting glances at him. Many stopped and stared at the tall man with the guns.

Of course, he knew for a fact that more than one of these students might be able to beat him in a fight, and he could respect that. His only problem was that he didn't _exactly_ think that they were man enough to take the challenge should it arise to them. As he walked by the eighteenth dorm access hallway entrance, he didn't notice a red-haired girl that was smaller than all the others watching him, open-mouthed with shock. As soon as he'd passed the corner that led up to the library, Ruby quickly began to head towards the food hall.

Perhaps she could tell the others just who'd made himself present in Beacon's halls: She was certain that she knew two people that would want to hear it.

Face didn't react much to the books around him, nor to the fancy polished woodwork, desks, hyper-advanced computers, or the size of the library. He'd been to Mann Manor and seen the fairly impressive library there, so he didn't exactly care much for books. Plus, every time he'd sat down to read, he had either been shot in the head, stabbed in the back, blown to hell, or hit by the ever-present Market Gardener Soldier.

It was almost like reading was illegal, and it was a terrifying fear to have.

But here, he was at least able to look at and interpret words without the threat of a man with a pink beard and party hat falling from the sky and smiting him with gardening implements. Upon entry, a few of the students present decided to shoot him a glance, but then return to whatever they were doing, giving Face the impression that all of them were seeing if he was worth mugging later, or that all of them just didn't give a shit about him. Remaining silent, he approached a nearby guide to find the section he was looking for. "Grimm...Grimm...G..." he trailed off, moving his free hand's finger down the list of words. Finally, he tapped it: Grimm, Section 11. "Bingo." Somehow keeping his footsteps quiet in spite of the fact that he was wearing a pair of heavy cowboy boots against wooden flooring, he followed the central aisle down the hall between the rows of computers, ascended up a wide set of stairs and hung a right after making his way to the top. There, he began looking down individual sections for the 'eleven' he was looking for. It didn't take long, however, until he saw a ginger girl, probably about seventeen or eighteen, trying to reach a book on the middle shelf. She was fairly small for the age Face would expect students to be at the school, and she was wearing a black, white, and pink outfit with white and pink shoes as she stood on her tip toes to try and reach the book she was after. After considering watching her struggle, Face sighed finally and walked over. It was blatantly obvious she hadn't noticed him, since she continued to make admittedly adorable 'nngh' noises in an almost child-like way as she attempted to reach the copy of 'DUST 101' on the shelf. It was the only book that was relevant to anything in the school, as far as he could gather, so Face simply leaned over, grabbed the book, then lowered it down to a height that the girl could reach.

"Ah!" The girl squealed with delight, almost snatching the book. "Thank yooooou!~~" She had a sing-song tone, which almost died when she turned to see the six foot tall gunman standing behind her. "Uhhh...hi?" She was forcing a smile, the blue eyes darting to try and assess Face. "Are you a student? You don't look familiar."

"Substitute teacher," Face replied. "Replacing Professor Port whilst he's trapping Grimm for a week or two, then I'm around for other things." The girl smiled, surprisingly.

"Oh, cool, I guess I'm the first one to meet you!" she beamed. "I'm Nora, Nora Valkyrie. I'm a first year student, I don't think I'll see much of you. Nice to meet you, though, and thanks for the help!"

"No problem," Face nodded calmly. As she sat down at a table (Her legs didn't even touch the ground on the chair, proving that she was way smaller than expected), the Sniper turned out of the small section and promptly to the left.

And, as luck would have it, section eleven was right beside him.

Smiling to himself, he headed into the bookcased area, placed his gun down by the side of the table, and began to look for as many titles to do with 'Grimm' as possible.


	4. A Display of Pure Misogyny

By mid-afternoon the next day, Face could probably dissect most known species of Grimm mid-strike, and name all their organs and muscles as the parts hit the floor. Their pancreas', hearts, and brains contained weak poisons that could be cancelled out by cooking the meat and differed with every single Grimm they came from. One Beowolf might have had a highly effective short-term aphrodisiac in its pancreas, while another Beowolf might have had the poison equivalent to napalm stored in its body. Either way, cooking all retrieved organs for over thirty minutes on an open fire was compulsory, as Face had figured out. Learning the anatomy of the creatures wasn't too hard: Diagrams and images had shown him that they were, as he had been told, just larger and more sinister versions of normal animals, often with tougher hide, massively increased strength and speed, plus little to no sense of self-preservation.

He was fully capable of performing a normal skinning, too: The books mentioned where their skin was at its weakest and where he could stab for an instant kill. With many of them, he noted, the position for a killing stab combined with their forward momentum _should_ have allowed him to rip them open whilst they were moving, peeling their skin away as they slowed down, before finally completely dropping their skin and dying instantly. And besides, Grimm hide could go for quite a bit on Earth's black markets, which could make Face a _very_ rich man should he manage to get home.

But at that point in time, he was about done for the day.

He cleared his throat and closed the book he was reading, raised his hat, and scratched the top of his head briefly, before quickly returning his hat onto his head before somebody realized that he didn't wear his hat all the time. Then, he stacked the books he had been studying, picked them up, and began putting them in their respective places on shelves. It was a fairly new thing for Face to have been studying: He had never gone to college or university, instead immediately signing up for the military once he came of age. And as he so vividly remembered, the bloke came in two days before graduation to tell him that he had been laid off, and Face replied by stabbing him in the head with a shard of the plate he'd been eating off, then got employed again moments after leaving the barracks for someone to find the body. And simply reading books was a rarity as a Mercenary: Any attempt would normally result in mass panic.

He remembered Halloween the year before.

_"Look out! He's got a book! He's going to READ!" Soldier cried. Both RED and BLU were sent into a mass panic and ran around screaming as Face attempted to finish the latest chapter of __**How to Love your Gun**__._

Face shuddered. He'd rather not have to put up with that shit again.

Finally placing _Grimm Study_ back onto the shelf, he grabbed the barrel of his rifle, threw it up slightly, and took a hold of the foregrip so he could carry it parallel to the ground. Ensuring he hadn't forgotten anything else, he began to make his way back to the staff accommodation. A few students that regularly visited the library now recognized him as 'The Alright Substitute Teacher' and gave small nods to him, which Face returned, and Nora often gave him a grin as he walked by, which he returned by waving slightly. As soon as he'd left the large room, though, his Scroll buzzed. Raising a brow, he pulled it out, turned it on, and checked the message.

_Your first class is at 9:00 AM tomorrow. Be there for 8:00 AM._

_\- Ozpin_

Face rolled his eyes. Ozpin hadn't really needed to put his name. There was an image of him next to the message. As he studied this photo and wondered if they'd got his photo for other people to see, he walked straight past Ruby. Again. This time, however, she was ready: She snapped a picture of him with her Scroll, before quickly running back to the dorm to prove it to Blake.

The quick footsteps behind him alerted Face, and he looked back. "Spy?" he murmured. "No, couldn't be." He shook his head, continued for a second, then paused again. "Although the footsteps _were_ running away. The French like doing that, unless I'm mistaken." Shrugging, he slipped his Scroll away and continued on down the corridor. Had he not been in an environment full of deadly assassins and gunmen for the previous fifteen years of his life, he might not have particularly cared that somebody had been sneaking around behind him. But, he had been in said location for fifteen years, so he did feel naturally unnerved by the unknown follower. Taking another quick glance over his shoulder, Face felt certain that the person was gone, and began to make his way back to his room.

He didn't mind the walking there, either: He'd walked longer distances in scorching Badlands and through bustling cities, both with the added threat of being killed or being detected by the enemy. He couldn't exactly say who the enemy _was_ when it came to missions involving a city, but considering how many times he'd been pinned down behind a crate by Thompson fire, he assumed it was gangsters. Quite a lot of gangsters, in fact: He almost wondered if the entire city was run by the Mafia. Most of the cars he saw were black sedans, a lot of the people he saw were wearing black trench coats and black fedoras, all of them seemed to be musicians (if he was going by the amount of violin cases that people carried around), and most of the guys he'd spoken to/been interrogated by had really thick AmerItalian accents.

And to think how many times he'd been driven out into the desert and told 'walk over there, buddy', before being shot in the back and having to pretend to die, he felt slightly relieved to be able to take a walk around the school without the ever-present threat of a revolver round to the back. Deciding to take the longer route back to the staff accommodation, Face exited the large set of doors leading into the yard outside the corridor that went to the library, and the immediate rays of sun shone onto his exposed skin. Supposedly, it was the middle of summer in that part of Remnant, but with Face's experience with the sun, it was nought but a cold winter. A couple of students gave small waves as they went by, but Face only acknowledged them with a nod.

It wasn't necessary for him to be a _friendly_ teacher. He could help students with things, sort out fights and other problems, but as mentioned, he wasn't being paid to make good with students. He got on well with the other teachers (not counting Glynda); They enjoyed his stories of Mercenary work, he enjoyed their stories of Hunstman work; He made coffee sometimes, and other times Oobleck would end up making a lot of coffee; And most importantly, he answered their questions, they answered his. It was a form of friendship between Face and the other members of staff. He was right about there being more than one hundred and fifty staff members: Occasionally, the staff room would have over twenty teachers, teaching assistants, visitors, and all other kinds of people in it, lounging about and drinking coffee and sharing notes and stories.

As he passed by the fountain in the center of the west courtyard, he noticed a group of students sitting on a grassy knoll adjacent to the Dust storage building. As with all the other students he'd seen, they were an odd group: One of them was a blonde kid, only about seventeen, and he was wearing a hoodie with plates of armour positioned over the top plus a pair of jeans and trainers. He was lying with his hands behind his head and legs crossed next to a girl with vibrant red hair that looked a bit like a Greek warrior. She was wearing a pair of metal greaves with a red piece of fabric to cover her lower body, and a brown piece of what looked to be leather armour over her body. She also wore a golden headband, echoing back to the time when the Greeks had goddesses that would jump out of their sky chariots with bloody great swords and kill absolutely everything they could whilst wearing a toga. She was lying in a similar position to the lad next to her, and he looked to be pretty deep in the friend zone with her, bringing Face to almost pity him. Next to her, there was Nora, the girl from the library. In size comparison to them, she looked to be a child, but nonetheless she remained with them, smiling all the while as she lay in front of another boy. This one was sitting cross-legged and polishing a shiny green pistol with a large knife blade built into it. He seemed to have taken inspiration from the Chinese; Relatively baggy white trousers, a green and gold detailed shirt, plus a single lock of pink hair in his black mop.

They seemed to be enjoying the sunshine beneath a rather large tree, with Nora playfully rolling around as the Chinese kid hardly acknowledged her. She seemed happy enough, so he was probably like her boyfriend or something. The other two simply lay next to each other and seemed to be talking, so Face didn't see any reason to go over and interrupt. However, his chosen path back to the staff room went by that tree, and if he didn't go past them then he wouldn't be able to identify new sniping perches on the way, so that meant he had to go past them, and that would most likely get Nora's attention, and if she was as child-like as she seemed, then she'd probably call him over. Sighing, he pulled his rifle strap slightly tighter and began making his way down the hexagonally-patterned pavement (which he thought was pretty cool in itself).

He had barely passed the group when he heard a shout.

_"Hi, Professor Face!_"

He sighed.

'_Bollocks, almost made it,_' he thought. Regardless of his own mind, he forced a smile and turned to see Nora waving over as the rest of her friends looked to him out of curiosity. "G'day," he called back. The response seemed to be the group discussing something. Through the absolutely tiny amount of lipreading he knew, Face could read their conversation.

"_You know him, Nora?_" asked the Chinese boy.

"_Yeah, he's the substitute teacher I was telling you about!_" Nora replied.

"_And so you just call over to him when he's nearby?_" Blonde-boy replied.

"_It's not the best idea to delay a teacher,_" said the Greek girl, _"I'm sure he has somewhere important to be."_

"_No, he doesn't look like he does, he's still standing there. Look._" Nora smiled, pointing back to him. As soon as Face had registered this sentence, he realised that he really had, in fact, been standing there and watching them. Nora raised a hand to her mouth. "PROFESSOR!" she yelled. "WHY'RE YOU FOCUSING ON US?"

Shit. Formulate a response.

"Assessment, Nora!" Face quickly called back. "I'm teaching a class about Grimm, I need to be able to assess how well people fare against the things! Not too sure how you'd all fare: I'm yet to see that."

"Does this mean you're teaching us at some point?" she called back.

"Maybe, depends on your year."

"First!"

"Then maybe."

Face didn't say anything else, instead offering a brief wave before they could ask any more questions that he couldn't be arsed to answer and made his way back to the staff building.

_**A whole day passes by...**_

Blake was even more awake for the first lesson of the day, and her team knew why. As they all sat at their desk in Professor Port's room, Blake was fidgeting with her Scroll and rapidly typing up a recount of the night where the mysterious gunman had knocked her out. She still felt a jolt of terror when somebody held her shoulder if she couldn't see them, her mind flashing back to her vision of turning around only to receive a fist to the eye.

Her eye still stung, occasionally.

Maybe once every two or three days.

But the black mark was gone, and as the black eye went away, so did the enquiries from fellow students as to how she got it. Training accident, she'd tell them.

But today, if the conditions were right, she might tell them the truth.

Could Ruby be right? She wouldn't stop asking herself that question as she thought over the night's events all those weeks ago and typed it up as quickly as she could. After all, Ruby may have been naïve as any other girl her age, but she was also one of the best team leaders of Beacon's first year students. It would be almost unheard of for her to have made a mistake in identifying..._him_: She was there when the man took a punch from Yang and just laughed it off. Something like that would never be able to leave anybody's mind, especially knowing that Yang was more than capable of bringing down larger Grimm creatures in one or two strikes.

But none of the other students around the lavish wooden room cared: They were just aware that Professor Port was out catching Grimm for the school. Most of team CRDL sat at the back of the room, idly chatting away, JNPR was doing their usual and going over notes, and RWBY...

Blake looked to her team and sighed briefly, watching Weiss attempting to retrieve her pen from Ruby, the latter balancing it on her nose and dodging Weiss' lunges towards it. Yang, meanwhile, was leaned back and texting with a slightly amused expression gracing her cheerful features. Blake rolled her eyes, and continued tapping feverishly away on her Scroll. She had almost gotten everything noted down, when the door to the back of the classroom slowly creaked open.

The room dropped into a dead silence: Chatting stopped, laughing stopped, play fighting stopped. Anything that might have been considered misbehaviour stopped. From where they were, team RWBY couldn't see who had arrived. Briefly, Yang leaned over to Blake. "_Blake,_" she whispered, "_You think this is our guy?_"

"_Let's hope so."_ Blake kept a steadfast frown as heavy footsteps against oak flooring finally shattered the silence. They were deliberate, paced, and generally quite menacing. And at the beginning of each step, a barely audible metallic _tink_ of metal against floor became gradually more apparent as the new entrant made their way to the front of the room. Blake's heart beat faster every second.

Deep down she already knew who it was.

And then, after a few moments, the man she wished she'd never have to see again stepped into the center of the room, bristling with weapons. Every step he took was weighed down by a heavy-looking set of leather boots with metal heels, adding an almost pendulum-like weight to the end of his rather long legs. He was wearing a black and red leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up, revealing a slightly scarred left forearm. And atop his head was the same, dirty brown hat with the red tooth band that she had been getting nightmares about for weeks. Slung over his back, there was a dated-looking rifle, presumably the same one he'd managed to hit her in the head with a few weeks earlier. Clipped to the left of his belt was a small grey pistol with a large magazine, and to his right was a holster with a large revolver tucked into it. And placed into a sheath onto his back, she could see the handle of a large knife.

Undoubtedly, this man was a hunter.

A killer.

A Mercenary.

She held back every feeling of rage as he made his way to Professor Port's desk, calmly took the rifle from his shoulder, and leaned it against the side of the table. Then, he turned back to look over the students, resting his weight onto his right hand as he leaned onto the desk. He had a pointed face with eyes obscured by a pair of aviation sunglasses, complimented by a thick black beard over his jaw. Blake could already see more than a few scars that had set in over his face, and as far as she was concerned he might end up with a few more by the end of his time at Beacon.

Finally, he gave a small smirk. "So," he began, his voice carrying a slight air of mockery in it as he spoke. "From what I hear, you horrible little mongrels are supposed to be my students for the next week! And from what I can see?" He paused. "You don't look too different from normal teenagers." A few students huffed at this accusation. "But while I'm here to be teaching you how to survive using nothing but the corpses of your fallen enemies, you'll be teaching me just how wrong that statement is, right?" He was met by silence. "Right." He quickly pushed himself into a walking position, pulling out the knife from his back sheath and twirling it idly around. "Now, it'd probably be in my best interests to tell you who I am." He paused, flicking the knife behind him, over his head, and finally catching it by the handle and examining it. "My name is Professor Face. You may refer to me as Mr. Face, Face, or, as I'm certain most of you are already muttering under your breath..." He slammed the knife into Port's desk, an act that students had seen their regular teacher do countless times with his axe if the class remained unsettled.

"...asshole." A few students chuckled at this, prompting Face to smile and gesture to the snickering team CRDL. "Ahhh, we have some live ones! Excellent: I was certain for a moment I'd walked into a morgue full of children, and I'd rather not live that escapade again." As students swallowed hard in shock at how nonchalantly he said that statement, Face grimaced and shook his head. "_Fuckin' drug cartels..._" Suddenly, his features brightened up to his old cocky self. "Now then!" He quickly approached the board, grabbing a piece of chalk from nearby and leaping onto a nearby chair to write on it.

**'EXTREME SURVIVAL 101: AUSTRALIA STYLE'**

Most students present in the room raised a brow. A young Faunus girl with rabbit ears cautiously raised a hand. "Um, Mr. Face?" she called out almost timidly. Face span on one foot on his chair, giving a small wave as he turned.

"That's me, yes?" he replied casually.

"Well," Velvet began, "We were told that we'd normally be given enough supplies to survive should we go on a mission."

"Well, isn't that lovely for you?" Face smiled in an almost predatory way, causing Velevet's ears to droop in a slightly adorable way. "Last time somebody told me 'all you'll need is here', I ended up being hunted down by several crime gangs, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and a gang of angry hippies, before finally ending up in a small building in the desert where my total killcount exceeded two hundred after not eating for three days! Aren't you lucky to have such a lovely school supply department?" Velvet opted to just remain silent and nod. "Good girl. Now, without further delay, I bring you today's lesson."

After almost prancing his way over the room, Face grabbed a large blue platform on wheels with a blue sheet covering something on it. After moving it to the center of the room, he whipped away the sheet to the disgusted reactions of those present. Lying on the trolley was the limp corpse of a Beowulf, bearing a large laceration across its face and a comically large hole in its chest. Across its body, ragged holes pointed to a repeated attack with a gun, the final blow being either the devastating shot to the chest or the cut to the face that split its head in two. The smell of blood rapidly filled the room, and at least one student vomited somewhere. Face, being a teacher, opted to completely ignore this and stand right next to the mangled body. Then, without changing his suddenly flat expression, he gestured to it. "Which one of you can tell me what you're looking at?" He was met by silence: Of course the students knew what it was. But not why it was so brutalized. Normally they'd hit it with one shot, then leave it. That was normally enough. But Mr. Face had just completely and utterly mangled it; Gone above and beyond what was necessary to kill a Beowulf. Nobody raised a hand, and Face rolled his eyes, folding his arms and drumming his fingers.

"Bloody hell, not even been five minutes and you've all died again." He sighed, and went back over to his desk, dislodging his knife from the wooden surface. Then, he promptly began to pace around behind the body, twirling the steel blade between his fingers with his free hand behind his back. "Listen, the lesson can't progress unless somebody tells me what they can se-"

A hand shot up. Face smiled, and flicked the knife straight down and embedding it into the dead Grimm with a chilling thud. Then, he span to his left and pointed at the small, white-haired girl in the front row with her arm up in the air and a grimace on her face. Face made his way over with his finger pointed at her. "Excellent! Somebody respawned! What's your name, Shiela?"

"Schnee," she replied sharply, "Weiss Schnee."

"Alright then, Mrs. Schnee," Face nodded, gesturing back to the corpse. "Can you tell us what this is?"

"That's a dead Beowulf."

"Correct! Anything else about it?"

"It's been completely destroyed."

"Not _completely._" Face noted. "Good try, though." Stepping back, he approached the body once again and pulled the knife out of its ribs. He used this to point at the hole in its chest cavity. "If you note that this hole allows you to see inside the Grimm, then you might also note that the organs are intact." Forcing the knife against the damaged flesh, Face used the flat edge to peel away the skin, much to the disgust of more than a few of the Huntsmen and Huntresses present. Then, to further this, he reached a hand forward and put it inside the body, moving it about inside and forcing a blonde boy on the front row to hold back vomit. After a moment of disgusting squelches, Face left the knife in the body and let go of the knife, pushing his now free hand against the shoulder of the Grimm and using it as a lever to rip out the Grimm's heart in one brutal movement. Blood spurted in more than a few directions, mostly going over the class' nonchalant teacher, and the blonde boy could no longer hold back the contents of his stomach. Face, meanwhile, was standing with the Grimm's bloodied-grey heart in his hand and a grin that nobody else had ever seen somebody wearing after killing a Grimm. "Like this heart!" he grinned, raising it slightly and beginning to pace in front of the incredibly unnerved class. "This is the heart of an adult male Beowulf, undamaged by gunfire. Now then;" Face paused, looking over the students. He smiled as he recognized a face. "Nora! Haven't seen you doing much yet!"

The ginger girl smiled. "Hi, Professor Face!"

"Alright, Mrs. Valkyrie, now what can you tell me that's prominent about this heart?" Nora cleared her throat.

"Well, from what I know about human and Faunus hearts, it's not the same colour as a normal heart, since I remember those being reddish-pink. And there's red veins all over it..."

"Precisely!" Face smiled, interrupting her and turning back to the class. "Does anybody know why it's grey?" When nobody responded, he rolled his eyes and randomly pointed at a student in the back of the room. He was a big lad with brown hair, giving Face the impression of him being a bit of a Jock. "That guy. You. Back of the room. Lazy one lying down texting the kid next to him." The boy sat up from his reclined position, almost seemingly surprised at being seen as he slipped his Scroll away. The boy with the mohawk sat next to him darted his eyes as he slipped the phone away.

"Uh, y-yes Professor?" he stuttered out quickly, rapidly trying to look like he'd been busy with his paperwork. Face's expression stayed flat and he raised a brow.

"You really weren't bloody paying attention?" he asked. The boy glared back.

"I was!" he snapped.

"Well then." Face smirked, raising his sunglasses slightly. "Let's test that theory. Catch." He stooped slightly to perform an underarm throw of the heart in his hands towards the boy up at the top of the room. He scrambled to catch it, blood spattering on his hands and a panicked expression on his face as his classmates laughed at his expense. Once he finally had a grip on it, Face began pacing in front of the room. "So then, Mr...?"

"Winchester." The boy kept a glare at his new teacher.

"Good. So, what do you hold in your hands?"

"A heart."

"What kind of heart?"

"A Beowulf heart."

"Age and gender?"

"Adult male."

"Good so far. Do you know why it's grey?"

"Because...Beowulves are wolves corrupted by unfiltered darkness?"

"Incorrect."

"What?" Mr. Winchester blinked. "That's what Professor Port told us-"

"Am I Professor Port?" Face asked. The boy paused, and shook his head. "Am I the one who mutilated this body?" The boy nodded. "And have I also done this to one of every species of known animal on the planet?" No response. "Well, I have. So, for now, you listen, alright?" The boy glared.

"Yes, _Asshole._" Almost everybody in the class oooh'd through their teeth at the outrageous insult. Even Blake found herself covering a smile. Face kept his flat expression.

'_You little son of a bitch. I like you._'

Deciding not to let it slide so easily, Face gestured for his new student to throw the heart back to him, which he did. Whilst it was in the air, quick as a flash Face had drawn his revolver and held it at his hip. He moved the hammer back as it came to bear, and he aimed it dead at the heart in mid-air. Then, without a single pause, he pulled the trigger, putting a neat hole straight through the heart. The bullet passed through in mid-flight, ricocheting from the back wall, off the ceiling, and then back down to hit the heart again just before it landed in Face's waiting hand. The room was, once again, sent into stunned silence as the sopping piece of meat landed in Face's already bloody hand. "Good lad. And if you want my comeback?" He briefly span his revolver, slipping it away into his holster, and then dropping the deflated organ back into the body with a wet slap. "You'll be needing to scrape it off your mum's teeth."

The response was an instantly recognizable blonde on the front row, Nora, most of the boys at the back, and quite a few other students completely breaking down with laughter, slamming their fists on the table and going red in amusement. Winchester promptly fired back the most dangerous glare that had ever been glared in the history of glares. Honestly, Face assumed that he could have out-glared a Soldier. However, since the lad could probably not even scratch him in terms of fighting, Face turned and flicked a piece of chalk into the air, catching it shortly after. Then, he made a pistol with his left hand and pointed it at his victim. "Boom."

Once the laughter had died down, he began to explain further into the anatomy of a Grimm, in _science_ terms.

_**At the end of the period...**_

The loud beeping around the room temporarily made Face think that a Demoman had just set some sticky bombs around the place or a sentry had appeared. However, once the students began to stand and make their way out of the room, he understood that it must have been the bell to start the next period. Placing the chalk down, he moved to the side of his desk as the class' occupants left. "Alright, hope you learned something today, people!" he called out. "Remember: It's neurotoxin, not darkness, and if you talk shit, you get hit! Important life lessons, guys, so apply them in as many situations as you can!" As he turned back towards his work, he noticed a large portion of the class leaving with smiles on their faces. That meant that they'd either put a bomb under his desk, or that they'd enjoyed the lesson. If it was the latter, then he was satisfied: Regardless, he made a brief check under the desk before sitting down.

"Right...so how was it I do paperwork...?" he murmured as he looked over the sheets on his desk. As he gave his stubble a brief scratch, he noticed a set of shadows falling over his desk. He paused, and flicked his eyes up. '_Four skirts. Four girls. I knew I recognized some of those kids._' He forced his usual predatory grin and looked up. Standing before him, there was Weiss Schnee, a girl he remembered identifying as 'Red' or 'Ruby' or something similar when she'd answered a question, and to his fondest memory, the blonde that had put a thick scar on his cheek, and the catgirl that he'd knocked the fuck out a few weeks before. "Well, hello girls," he sighed. "To what do I owe for the pleasure of looking at your miserable faces?" His answer was the immediate slamming of a pair of hands on his desk as the black-haired girl lunged forward.

"You know what this is about!" she snarled. "You were working with Roman Torchwick and the White Fang at the docks!"

"That's me," Face replied, frowning. "And I'd prefer it if none of us did anything that we'll regret." Weiss snorted, folding her arms.

"That's not on topic." She smirked devilishly all of a sudden. "And if you don't want to talk, then I'm certain that Yang here has unfinished business with you for your..._actions_ against Blake." To punctuate, the tall blonde punched a fist into her other hand in an attempt at intimidation. Face kept a raised brow for a moment, looking them all over.

"Are you _threatening_ me?" Face narrowed his eyes, hand uncertainly reaching for his revolver.

"Not as far as anybody in the school is going to know," Weiss shot back. "And don't even think about drawing that gun. Yang beat you down once, she'll do it again."

"She hardly scratched me," Face growled, gesturing to the scar on his left cheek.

"I could always give you a matching set." Yang kept her arms folded and her magenta eyes narrowed with a sly grin on her face. "You wanna take that chance? Because we want answers." There was silence as Face removed his sunglasses, rubbed his eyes, and then slipped them back on. Then, he lowered the brow of his hat. _'Ohhh, this isn't going to end well..._'

"Listen, as much as you'd like information, I'm afraid I don't have nearly as much as you want," he said flatly, adjusting his sunglasses. "All I was given was a set of orders, and a promise of payment. If you understand how a Mercenary operates, then you'll know that such a promise could easily convince me to perform any manner of violent acts. So that night at the docks was just business." The girls continued to glare. Finally, Blake made a 'pfft' sound, and leaned back from the desk.

"I'm not convinced that's all you know," she said in an almost serious tone. "Yang?" Yang began to move around Face's desk, which was just about it for Face. He slammed his fist on the desk and stood straight up, towering over the girl.

"Now you listen here, you little cunt," he snarled, jabbing a finger at her. "You might think that you're hot shit for managing to get into this academy, and that's fine. You passed through all your fucking exams in your previous school to get here. You know what I did to get where I am now? I killed _men._" Yang was starting to back away as their teacher began approaching the girls. And if even Yang, master of unarmed fighting, was backing away, then it was best that the other three started moving backwards, too. "I killed well over ten thousand men with the same gun over the course of fifteen years, day in, day out, with no option to leave and no guarantee that I wouldn't die in the process. And when I died, I'd just come right back and continue the same shitty cycle over again. I was feared by the enemy, respected by my team, and as a Mercenary, rejected by everyone else. And one day, I get pulled away from my own planet and sent to fucking prison with nobody explaining what it means to be 'earthborn'. So, if you four think that it's one of your divine fucking rights to walk up to _me_, threaten me, and then demand answers, then you go rethink that, _right now._" Team RWBY remained silent, with fear and anger running through them simultaneously. Their teacher, the tall man in the blood-spattered clothes, remained glaring at them in a way that none of them had ever experienced in their lives. They could see something they hadn't ever seen in anybody's eyes.

In his eyes, there was murderous intent; coagulated anger blocking the blood-like flow of any truly good intentions.

After a moment of glaring between the girls and the gunman, the former began to silently make their way out of the room, all of them not once looking back and heavy frowns set onto their faces as they stormed out. Once the door slammed, Face groaned, and slumped down on his desk. "Fucking hell." He moved a hand up to rub his face, scratching the bridge of his nose and thinking about the events that had just transpired. They had just walked up to him and demanded answers. If anything, he should have been demanding answers since he'd been here in Remnant. They did deserve some, but they'd immediately resorted to violence to get what they wanted. Was that what he seemed like to others? Not that he cared. He was just there because it was either Beacon, or prison.

And hell if he was going back to prison.

That'd mean he would need to join Junior's gang when he got out as a means of employment. No problems with getting into the gang, of course, since Face had already made plans to visit Junior's club at some point for a few drinks. The big guy had been in and out of jail during the time that Face was under guard, so he'd gotten to know him fairly well when he was eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nice bloke...just a bit too 'forward' when approaching a problem, and he must have been seven foot tall, minimum.

Face now knew that he himself was a very forward person.

Just then, the door swung open, and he was quick to draw his revolver and take aim from the hip. Instead of the girls coming back in with weapons, he realized that he was currently pointing a gun at the woman who employed him. Keeping his eyes narrowed, he let a huff of air escape his nose, emitting a small grunt as he slipped it back into the holster. "I assume you're here to be snarky?" he asked with a raised brow, folding his arms as he leaned on the desk. Glynda adjusted her glasses with her usual, assessing gaze, and continued to approach him.

"I'm actually here to congratulate you," she replied, coming to a halt to Face's right and standing tall with her hands behind her back. Face flicked his eyes over.

"What, was I thorough enough?" He gave a small gesture to the completely eviscerated Grimm corpse in the centre of the room, blood staining his clothes, the rag used to display the organs, and the floor. Glynda grimaced at the sight.

"Quite thorough, Mr. Face," she continued. "According to lesson reviews by our students, it was the most entertaining lesson they'd had in months: The top reasons were 'The teacher was fun' and 'More detail about Grimm anatomy than I've ever seen'." Face raised his other brow.

"Well, alright then. Taught them something new."

"We had one student, a 'Cardin Winchester', saying 'The teacher was an asshole'."

"Oh, that kid? He got lippy, and I basically told him to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up."

"Miss Velvet Scarlatina claimed 'Language was pretty harsh.'"

"These were teenagers, I was fairly certain they could take some tough words."

"Jaune Arc claimed 'The Grimm made a noise and for some reason all the Professor said was 'Fuck, fuck, fuck' whilst shooting it and stomping on its head.'"

"Hunter's instincts."

"And we have Miss Pyrrha Nikos saying '10/10 would lesson again'."

"Huh. Alright then. So, what's this leading up to?"

"It means that Ozpin is happy with how well you performed, and is considering paying you upon the end of your time here, should you keep this up."

"Right. And that money will help me in prison, how?"

"That's something you'll have to worry about at the time." Glynda straightened up again, looking down at Face. He was pretty sure she was six foot six. He had to look up to see her face, otherwise he was staring at her boobs and that would probably get him slapped. She promptly turned and began to leave, but Face raised his hand behind her.

"Ah, question?" he called out. "Have you got something against me, Miss Goodwytch?" The blonde paused, and looked back at him slightly.

"Not you specifically," she said calmly. "I just don't deal well with crazed gunmen who have had previous connections to terrorists."

She left, leaving Face to try to figure out what that even meant. He checked his watch, surprised to see that it was only ten past eleven. Two hour lesson, time went by quickly. He cast his gaze down to the dead Grimm, and scratched his stubble.

"Best get cooking, lunch is in an hour."


	5. A Little Heart to Heart

Face left the empty classroom at around lunch-time, calmly walking towards the school auditorium whilst eating the cooked foreleg of the Beowulf as though it were a fried chicken giblet. His left hand in his pocket, rifle over his shoulder, and all his other gear secured, he gnawed away at the oily bicep, getting dodgy looks from students as he went by. He didn't really give a shit: It was the best thing he'd eaten for fucking ages. Tasted almost exactly like chicken, making it all the better when he discovered that Grimm claws are made of a super-hard and insoluble version of salt. That explained why it apparently hurt like hell to be clawed by one: The wound would be salted on contact. So Face had the brilliant idea to grind the claws up with the butt of his rifle and use it as was intended: As salt, to be put on meat.

"I'm a fuckin' genius," Face muttered to himself as he went by the windows to the school's dinner hall. Inside, there was a huge feast for the students, and apparently that was _lunch_ for them. Face wasn't really partial to big meals. A meal for him would normally be some small rodent that made the mistake of straying into his perch, cooked after the battle using a dead Pyro's flamethrower. Though, since that day he had been fired, Face did sometimes think of getting hold of some 'White Phosphorous'. Using it, seeing what it actually does. He hadn't really seen it in action, but according to everyone else, it was horrible, so to Face, seeing enemies affected by the substance must be a glorious sight to behold.

He was often called sadistic; a psychopath with no regard for how painful things could be. Of course he understood that: Disciplinary Actions, for one, were fucking excruciating, making Glynda all that more terrifying. She was _definitely_ a woman that Face would not want to be drawn towards. "Scary bitch," he said out loud. A few students looked towards him, and he just shrugged it off, finally pulling the forearm free from the...bone that was next to the shoulder.

Not the...hilarious bone, no, that wasn't it...

Blagh. Fuck it. Face wasn't Medic. He only knew that the head was a viable target. Fuck all the other bones, they could all go and snap in half for all he cared. He really should have cared, after RED Soldier's Great Snappening of 1965, where all his bones were broken for literally no discernable reason, but that day, Face didn't feel like caring. Maybe it was just because he was practically in meat heaven. Maybe because it was the best meal he'd eaten in the past 16 years, since that expensive parakeet in Abu Dhabi. He didn't know. But whatever it was, _he liked it._ He didn't have any more teaching to do for the rest of the day, so all he wanted to do was go to the auditorium. That was the single building he hadn't seen.

Supposedly, it was designed for students to train in combat with each other, so he was hoping to at least see what the place looked like in the unlikely event that Glynda made him have a fight. Of course, he wouldn't _mind_ having a fight, but it was always prudent to prepare for anything.

As he entered and headed up a set of stairs labelled '**STAFF ONLY**', he finished off the last of the flesh still attached to the remaining bone, before throwing said bone into a nearby bin as he went out onto a small balcony. The seating establishment in the area was an empty group of benches overlooking a large circular arena. This was replicated all around, likely as the positions where students could watch the fighting. To prove this, there was a cluster of students sitting all around the arena. In the middle, there was a 'pit' with a ring in the center floor, and in the ring at that point was a pair of students sparring. The area was lit up by the sounds of steel against steel and grunts of effort as a red-haired young woman duelled against a young man in armour.

Face did recognize them both from earlier: One of them was the kid that kept vomiting (John, or Jaune, if he remembered rightly), and the other was the girl that seemed to have him friendzoned (She was called Pyrrha. Face could remember obscure names like that, for some reason). Both seemed quite good with their swords and shields, with both their weapons being nothing but blurs. However, in the event that one of them was stabbed, Face was still surprised at just how easily they shrugged it off. As he sat down, he noticed a large pair of screens near the exit to the arena displaying the faces of the two students and a coloured bar beneath. This looked as though it represented Aura, since when Jaune took a hit the coloured portion of the bar became smaller. Pyrrha seemed to be winning, since her Aura bar was almost fully green, whilst Jaune was just in the orange with a half-full bar. Notably, the hits Pyrrha was managing to get in were incredibly quick. Face highly doubted that he himself could avoid one of those strikes, and he was the self-proclaimed 'Badlands Bladesman' (a title that he held up with great pride, sellotape, and bits of string). Watching the young pair made him consider his own combat strategies.

Did he have an Aura? Apparently that was something that needed to be unlocked. But an even better question was if he needed it whatsoever: All Mercenaries could take a fair few handgun and rifle rounds to bring down, and a Sniper was capable of withstanding at least two hits from a sword, machete, wrench, or other close quarters weapon. That, coupled with the fact that Face often _refused_ to die meant he could probably tank about four hits before succumbing to his injuries, swearing loudly, then dying incredibly violently. That being said, Face figured it'd be pretty good to be able to take even more hits without the threat of complete and utter physical decimation.

Just then, he noticed that Jaune and Pyrrha interlocked blades and held themselves close to each other, their faces becoming masks of determination. Jaune was pushing against Pyrrha, and managing to shift her footing back approximately a foot or so, until she swept her leg forward, knocking him straight onto the ground. And before Jaune could get up, Pyrrha was pointing her sword straight at him, but with a smile. The lights flicked on overhead as if on cue, and illuminated the rest of the room: Face was surprised to see that there was about twenty more students gathered, watching the battle unfold. As Pyrrha helped Jaune to his feet, Face noticed Glynda enter the arena with her Scroll.

"A well fought battle, Mr. Arc," she said in her usual tone of voice but with what actually looked like a smile. "You certainly have improved greatly over these recent weeks." The blonde gave a smile and a nod.

"Thanks, professor," he said, exhausted. He put a finger to his cheek to feel a small bloody cut, rubbing over it with his thumb. Face, being someone with good eyes, noticed that the cut almost instantly sealed up. From where he was, anybody else wouldn't have seen that. But since Face's bloodstream for the past fifteen years had practically consisted of coffee, and that he always wore sunglasses in any environment, he probably had the best eyesight out of anybody he knew. Obviously, Demoman had to have a decent eye, since he only had the one, and Face was almost certain that Spy's entire world was in slow motion (which was a likely explanation for how he was so good at CQC training, dodging all of the swings made at him and almost always winning unless Heavy got a lucky hit and destroyed his entire head), but in terms of clarity over long distances, and being able to spot the smallest things and movements at high speed, Face had them beat.

Regardless of Jaune's magic healing ability, Glynda adjusted her glasses and continued. "So the first battle goes to Miss Nikos, but with Mr. Arc coming close to making a comeback." She tapped on her scroll, and flicked her eyes up across the students gathered, finally noticing Face and adjusting her glasses _again_ (Face wondered if the things were even hers). "Professor Face?" she asked, many of the students looking over. "I'm surprised you haven't gone back to whichever cave you came from." A few students 'ooh'd' at the insult.

"Respectfully, Professor Goodwytch," Face grinned, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. "I'd suggest you stop talking before I come down there and school you myself." Again, a round of 'OOH's'. The students were already picking up on the fact that it was escalating quickly, many of them whipping out their Scrolls and telling everybody else that Glynda and Face were squaring off in the auditorium. The woman in the arena frowned, and folded away her Scroll.

"Please don't tell me you're being serious with threatening one of the most adept Huntresses in Remnant," she asked, raising a brow with her hands behind her back.

"Have gun, will fight," Face whistled, gesturing to the rifle leaning next to him. "Thought you'd have told these guys that by now."

"Is that a challenge?" Glynda smirked.

"Depends if you've ever had a fight with someone like me, and if you're prepared to get your ass kicked." As Face stood, he noticed that the number of people in the auditorium had multiplied massively: No longer was it twenty, instead increasing to one hundred to two hundred students, all hoping to watch two teachers duke it out. Word travels fast. He stepped forward towards the railing preventing people from falling into the battle arena, and calmly vaulted it, landing on the ground with an almighty crack and unexplainable splatter of blood. But as usual, he felt fine: He'd fallen off skyscrapers before, landing on his face, and even then fall damage would never be able to break his bones for some reason. He landed in a low crouch, hand to the floor for support as usual, before standing up and slipping the rifle off his shoulder to land in his waiting hands. As he began to make his way over to Glynda, he racked the bolt back, loading a round. As she pulled out her Scroll, tapping on it a few times.

"Before we start this trivial engagement, I'm going to get your Aura connected into the system, so I know when to stop punishing you." As she continued pressing the screen, Face smirked.

"Kinky," he laughed, pacing away to the other end of the room. On the banners that had originally had images of Jaune and Pyrrha's Aura levels, one side had an image of Glynda, plus her Aura level, and the other...

"Professor Face, what did you do to the system?" she groaned, gesturing to the banner as students began chuckling. Rather than the solid green bar that represented Aura, Face instead had a cartoon-like '', labelled with the number '**125**'. Above that, there was a large image of him standing there, moving in exactly the way he was. Frowning in genuine confusion at it, Face gave a few test movements to see if the copy of him followed. He scratched his head, waved his hand slightly, jumped a bit, and gave the finger, as any bloke would, before finally shrugging.

"Didn't do anything," he whistled to Glynda. "Direct all questions about Mercenary durability levels to Valve Incorporated." Glynda remained with a level facial expression, blinking.

"...of course." she sighed, before putting her scroll away and drawing her Disciplinary Action. "Now, Professor Face, I'm fairly certain you don't have an Aura active, and I won't be doing you the liberty of activating it for you, so I think that it would be best to stop when your 'Health' reaches twenty or lower."

"That's when I'll probably die," Face replied, rolling his shoulders and readying his gun. "So how about we get bloody goin'?" Glynda rolled her eyes and nodded, standing up perfectly straight and pointing her riding crop at Face from across the room. Students went silent as most of them pulled out Scrolls to record. Sitting in the front row, Ruby, Yang, Weiss, and Blake sat, completely enticed by the thought of watching Face take a beating for not answering their questions. Sure, they did realize that he needed answers just as much as they did, but he still punched Blake in the eye and threatened them, so he did have it coming if he was beaten down. Slowly, Ruby leaned over to Yang.

"Sis," she whispered, "Are you recording this?"

"I'm streaming it live over the RemNet," Yang whispered back, flicking her magenta eyes down to the Scroll in her hand. "Already getting a million viewers and counting."

Just then, action.

Glynda made the first move, swiping her riding crop through the air and creating a large number of thick ice shards, before quickly sending them flying in Face's direction. The Sniper responded by diving forward and drawing his SMG, flicking off the safety and beginning to fire rounds at all the crystals approaching him specifically. With each round fired from his small machine pistol, another shard of ice smashed and tinkled to the floor, melting instantly into water and quickly freezing back into a long patch of ice, stretching from Glynda to Face. In spite of getting most of them, a shard still shot straight towards Face, causing him to quickly dive out the way and land in the pile of the still-smoking casings his gun had made. Recovering quickly, Face rolled back to a crouch, levelling his rifle and firing off a snap shot towards Glynda. The loud bang came before Glynda staggering slightly as the bullet smashed into the Aura covering her body, chipping off about a tenth of her available Aura and causing a cheer from the crowd gathered. As quickly as he could, Face began to rack the bolt and load another bullet as Glynda recovered, firing over a gout of flame in response. Face didn't dodge as fast as he'd hoped, the wash of flame hitting his shoulder as he leapt to the left and sending him spiralling to the floor with his shoulder aflame.

"Ah, son of a bitch," he grunted, quickly picking himself up and kneeling to pat the flames out on his shoulder. Spitting out a mouthful of dust, he checked the banner with his health. The large number '**109**' had replaced the 125 he had seen at the start, meaning that Glynda could do quite a bit of damage even though she'd only clipped his shoulder with the shot. Frowning, he gritted his teeth and glared at Glynda, the woman now giving a mocking smirk. Face stood up, defiant as ever. "That it?! Huh?!" he called over. Just as he was raising his gun, he realized something.

His gun.

Shit.

He quickly looked to his left, and noticed that his rifle was lying a good twenty feet away, and between him and it was twenty feet of open ground. He flicked his gaze back to Glynda, who was already preparing her next attack, then back to his gun. As his opponent waved her riding crop, Face rolled his eyes. "Oh, fuck it, it was taking too long to load anyway..." he muttered, before making a run the other way with his revolver drawn. The response was immediate: Glynda unleashed a barrage of large red Dust crystals, firing them through the air and causing them to detonate on impact. Face was having to jump and roll over most of them, occasionally firing a shot back from his gun but still continuing around the arena.

It was as he noticed the crystal's resemblance to Soldier's rockets that it hit him.

_They were just like Soldier's rockets._

They caused splash damage (Face's Health number was now at 74), sailed in straight lines, and she was specifically aiming them at his feet. He'd done some damage to her Aura, too: It was now holding at just above half, on a colour between green and orange. So by now, she was getting desperate, and would probably begin spamming the projectiles. During a brief pause in the assault, as Glynda created more projectiles with her usual stern facial expression, Face reloaded his SMG, slipped his revolver away, and drew his knife, holding it in his right hand, SMG in his left. As Glynda readied her projectiles and pointed them in Face's direction, the Sniper steadied his footing and narrowed his eyes, pointing his knife at her threateningly. "_Come on,_" he smirked. Glynda adjusted her glasses, and waved her riding crop, sending individual crystals flying at Face like a battery of missiles. Breathing out, Face began to run towards the witch, dodging incoming attacks as much as he could. He didn't fire a single bullet as he made his way over, but it certainly was tempting, especially considering that each nearby blast was chipping away at his health, knocking 5 off each time. By the time he was in range, he had only 32 left on the meter.

And by the time he was in range, Glynda decided she might finish him off. She directed two projectiles to fire simultaneously at his feet, both of them streaking through the air at speed towards the ground.

Face mentally hoped he'd remembered the technique correctly, and jumped just as the explosives hit the ground.

The force of the detonation threw Face straight into the air, the Sniper using the momentum from his jump to mimic the action that Soldier would do day in, day out: The Rocket Jump. Jaws fell open across the room as Face soared into the air, slamming his left hand onto his right wrist crossed over his body, and used it as a platform to aim. And as he began to go up above the student seating level, he began to fire down hot lead towards Glynda.

She was too stunned to move: It was probably the single most ridiculous thing she had ever seen somebody do, even thinking it to almost be impossible, but here was Face. The idiotic, psychotic, ex-criminal and Mercenary terrorist. And he was doing it perfectly and defying just about every law of physics.

Her pause cost her dearly: As she stood still in awe, every single one of the twenty five bullets in his magazine slammed against her aura, pushing her Aura bar into the segment of orange that was dangerously close to red, meaning she had nearly lost. Finally, as Face was rapidly dropping down, she heard the _click_ as his ammunition ran dry. However, before she could prepare a counter attack, Face slammed down in front of her, rolled, and used his forward momentum to throw his SMG and knife away, then deliver a powerful right hook that hit her square in the face. This attack was enough to drop her Aura into the red, and knock her off her feet. She lay there, stunned, as the lights came on. Face remained in the position he had finished the punch in, crouching low with his right fist swept over his body and breathing heavily. From where she was, she could see that quite a few fragments of Dust had embedded themselves in his clothing, which could potentially become dangerous if he didn't get them pulled out. After a few moments where nobody said anything (and the stream viewers around the world went crazy and began typing 'holy fucking shit' rapidly onto their keyboards), Face stood, and leaned his weight to one side, exhaling as he looked up to the number on the banner.

'**1**'.

"Holy fucking shit," he murmured, smiling as he wiped away blood that was dribbling from his nose and other facial orifices. He promptly turned to the students watching, his trademark grin plastered over his face. "...and that is how you DO IT, YOU WANKERS!" he yelled, tapping his heels together and punching the air in celebration as the audience completely lost it. The RemNet viewers of the streamers around the room managed to crash a server by flooding it with surprised messages, almost the entire room stood and applauded, and Ozpin sipped his coffee, nodding slightly and smiling.

Team RWBY just sat there. None of their mouths remained un-opened at what they'd just witnessed. Professor Face rode an explosion, firing a machine gun at the most experienced Dust user in Beacon, before landing and knocking her off her feet in one punch, surviving with _one health remaining._ Yang closed her mouth, and slowly lowered her Scroll, giving the viewers a brief eyeful of her legs before ending the stream without any words. "That...was unexpected." She said finally, looking to Blake. "I guess...he's pretty good?" The Faunus girl shot her partner a glare.

"So?" she snapped suddenly, causing her three teammates to recoil slightly. "He's still a criminal, he helped Torchwick, and he just beat up Professor Goodwytch. I don't care how good he is, I want answers from him." Ruby and Weiss looked at each other with worry, then Weiss looked to Blake, wincing slightly under the deafening sound of cheers.

"But Blake," she began, putting a hand on Blake's shoulder, "He didn't want to give us answers last time, what makes you thin-?" Blake suddenly shrugged Weiss' hand off, not moving her icy glare from Professor Face, who was helping Glynda to her feet and escorting her out of the arena.

"He's telling us everything," she scowled. "Whether he likes it, or not."

_**Meanwhile, in the locker room...**_

Face made sure Glynda was supported as he escorted her over to a bench with medical supplies nearby. The room was relatively dark, but there were no students in there for that time due to most of them being upstairs excitedly discussing the events that had transpired. Face kept his arm underneath Glynda to keep her supported, and made his way to the bench next to a first aid kit. "You alright to sit down whilst I get the medkit?" he asked. Glynda continued to stare ahead.

"Uh...y-yes, I think so." Glynda sighed, wincing as Face helped her sit on the wooden bench. Once she was steady on the seat, Face walked over to the wall with the first aid kit behind a glass case, and quite casually punched through the guard window, grabbing the bag inside and pulling it out, prompting the empty cabinet's door to open as he removed it. He cleared his throat as he sat beside Glynda.

"Well, sorry for starting that one," he said as he rolled Glynda's slightly bloody sleeve up to reveal a thick cut where a bullet had somehow negated her Aura. "I, ah, don't back down from challenges...as you'd imagine..." Glynda smiled slightly as Face went into the bag for a needle and thread.

"So I gather," she replied flatly, watching as her former opponent pulled out the thin steel needle with stitch thread. She mentally steeled herself: She wasn't exactly the biggest fan of needles. She watched as Face threaded the string. "Why are _you_ stitching these wounds closed, anyway? You created them."

"A father can love his children, right?" Face chuckled, before slowly trailing off as he realized what he'd just said was kind of fucked up. "Ahem. Ah, well, you see, since I wasn't allowed to kill you and that was practice, I figured that I might as well practise my first aid as well. Plus, I feel kind of bad for doing that in front of your students."

"And _that's_ another thing," Glynda cut in. "Why were you even in my lecture hall?"

"Why did you start insulting me? This wouldn't have happened, you wouldn't be needing to be stitched up, and I wouldn't be able to feel my internal organs slowly shutting down." Glynda opened her mouth to speak, but closed it a moment later, silently holding her arm out for Face to sew shut like a child in a nurse's office.

"While I'm still amazed that you're capable of fighting, I must say, I didn't expect you to do that." Glynda said suddenly, prompting a smile from Face as he kneeled next to her to gain access to her wounded left arm. "I didn't even think that would be physically possible." Face chuckled, but paused before he began stitching.

"Oh, you don't mind if I stitch your cut up?" he asked. Glynda shook her head, wincing slightly as the needle pushed through her skin and came out on the other side of the cut. "Alright...yeah. I honestly didn't think it was possible either," Face explained, "But then that idea was blown out of the water fifteen years ago when I first met Soldier. To get to battles faster, he'd learned to fire missiles at his own feet as propulsion, like you saw, and then he'd be at the scene five times faster than he would if he'd have just walked. So I just improvised with what you were using."

"Volatile Fire Dust," Glynda replied, "If it's volatile, it tends to explode on the slightest of knocks."

"Kind of like rocket fuel?" Face asked.

"If you think of it that way, I suppose," she replied. "And I do thank you for going through this trouble."

"You kidding?" Face laughed. "These are the best medical supplies I've seen for years, there's no way in hell I'd pass this chance up. Mann Co.'s 'medkits' contained a stick to lever the bullets out, a bottle of strong whiskey, and a handgun with one shot to blow your head off if the pain became too much. To be honest, I'm kind of amazed this first aid kit doesn't have a stick." Glynda winced at the thought.

"Was the whiskey for anti-septic?" she frowned, raising a brow slightly.

"Unfortunately not." Face shook his head, tying off the end of the stitch and applying a plaster over it. "Had I been using a Mann Co. medkit here, you would probably be completely off-your-tits drunk. The alcohol basically numbed the pain whilst someone else was doing the field surgery. And I use 'surgery' very lightly." Glynda didn't dare ask. Instead, she remained silent as Face stood looking over her. "That can't be everything, I must have hit you about thirty five times, with hollow points and a hunting rifle, no less. C'mon, what else needs patching up?" Glynda remained completely silent, legs crossed and arms folded as she looked down.

There was no way in _hell_ she was letting him put plasters on her boobs.

"Ah," Glynda said finally, looking to the right. "Is my cheek alright?" Face crouched slightly to look at the side of her face: Sure enough, there was a gash going from the bottom of her ear to the center of her cheek.

"That's...gonna take some fixing," Face sighed, whistling through his teeth. "Might need to disinfect that one." Glynda paled slightly, and Face noticed, patting her on the shoulder before going back through the medical kit. "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing. It'll get infected otherwise." She sighed.

"Fine, fine, just get it over with," she muttered as Face produced a small glass bottle of alcohol. As he popped off the lid, Glynda thought of something that might make it easier. "Like I mentioned, Ozpin is considering paying you," she said. "I'm not sure what he's going to think of that little 'episode', but I guarantee he'll want to speak to you."

"That's correct, I do," a sudden voice claimed from across the room, prompting Face to splash the alcohol a little bit harder than he'd originally planned, covering the entire wound instantly and prompting Glynda to noticeably wince and grunt through her teeth, glaring at Face as she scrunched one eye shut and tightly gripped the bench as pain relief.

"Ah, sorry," Face scratched back of his head, before looking back at the headmaster. "Professor Ozpin, what brings you here? How'd you even know where we were?" Ozpin chuckled, sipping his coffee.

"Let's just say I like to keep tabs on my people at all times," he replied calmly. Glynda rolled her eyes, looking at Face.

"He looks at CCTV constantly," she corrected. "It's slightly creepy."

"Well, at least I'm used to it..." Face muttered, remembering just how many cameras watched him on a daily basis. When RED was eating, sleeping, fighting, dying, crafting, or somehow even going out, the 'Administrator' somehow managed to track their movements at all times. He'd been the recipent of more than a few letters reprimanding him for 'inappropriate activities' when he, Spy, and Engineer had gone on a night out of nothing but drive-by shootings, drinking, non-work contracts, and mafia gunfights. However, in spite of that, the three Mercs were actually rewarded with a trio of golden, heavily ornate handguns from 'Mann Co. Reserve', so Face hadn't really seen any reason to argue about such levels of surveillance.

"So," Professor Ozpin began, pacing over to the bench opposite them so the witch and the gunman could see him. "I see your little 'confrontation' escalated fairly quickly."

"No offense to you, Ozpin," Face replied, being extra careful as he gently began to stitch around Glynda's eye. "But I'm not going to say anything about what it was about."

"But whatever it was about drew a crowd," Ozpin noted. "And it certainly raised awareness of the creativity a Huntress or Huntsman can have. It's already viral on the RemNet. From what I hear, forums and chat rooms are going crazy speculating why Glynda Goodwytch and an Earthborn were fighting."

"And all of them are too stupid to consider it might have just been practice?" Face raised a brow, accidentally managing to prod Glynda's brain through her skull.

She tasted purple for a second, and it tasted of happy.

"...alongside that, people could see there was some kind of 'driving force' behind your fighting. Like you two had wanted to fight for a long time."

"If I may interject, Professor?" Glynda raised a hand, before pointing it at Face. "Since I met him, I have wanted to slap him senseless." Face paused, looking up slightly.

"...yeah, cheers," he said flatly. "Good to know you're actually a violent person."

"Then why let him do this to you?" Ozpin asked, keeping his usual, outlandishly good poker face in check.

"What, beat me?" Glynda raised a brow.

"_Help you._" Ozpin corrected. "Why let him sew you back together?" Glynda remained silent, trying to think of an answer.

"That..." she paused. "...I suppose I was against it all. His presence, how you just let him in, how you trusted him, how he acted, how he spoke and behaved. I just saw him as another terrorist. But now I've actually spoken to him..." She looked up at Face and smiled. _Genuinely _smiled. "He isn't too bad. He's just complicated." Face grinned back, then looked at Ozpin.

"Nice distraction, Ozpin," he smirked. "She would probably have passed out if she had focused on the pain there." Glynda raised a brow, and rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but keep her smile.

"And I suppose you know what it's like to be injured there?" she asked rhetorically.

"You really wanna know?" Face asked, smiling as he began to pack up the needle. Glynda was getting up and dusting off her skirt, and she certainly looked better, so he figured she could probably handle it.

"You can tell me all about them tonight," she smiled back. "You've still got a _lot_ of stitching to do, and I think you'd run out of thread here. I'll get some thread from the infirmary and you can meet me in my room to sew my legs, arms, back, and torso shut. That, and the way I see it, you can wash and fix my uniform that you ripped." Face rolled his eyes.

"Sure thing, not like I had plans for the evening," he replied. He cast a glance to Ozpin, who kept his usual poker face. "And besides, don't I have a lesson tomorrow?"

"Yes, but at a later period," Ozpin nodded, sipping his coffee again. "I think it would be best if you began to teach them how to cook. But for now, I think you have a few fans outside." Ozpin looked to Glynda. "Professor Goodwytch, you're with me. I think we should exit through the fire escape, since we need to be in a hearing with General Ironwood about his arrival in five minutes." Face blinked as he kicked the first aid kit across the room.

"Wait, _he's_ arriving in five minutes, or _you're_ arriving to talk about his arrival in five minutes, or are you arriving in five minutes to talk about his arrival later on?" Face asked.

Damn, Ozpin's poker face was good.

"All of the above," Ozpin said calmly as he pushed a door open. "I will speak to you at some point soon, Professor Face." As they slipped out of the doorway, Face gave a small, awkward wave goodbye.

"Uh...see ya?" he said quietly as the door slammed. Frowning, he gave his eyes a rub behind his glasses, and slowly began to make his way to the door. He was still lingering on one health.

He sighed, and began to head towards the doorway that led back out into the arena, since he planned to cut across it and go to the lunch hall for a sandwich or two. That'd get him feeling better.

But obviously, the plan was dashed as he opened the doors to the sound of students beginning to cheer his name, and the sight of quite a lot of them crowding around him to fangirl/boy. Up on the seating, however, he noticed team RWBY glaring down at him.

'_One day, I'll answer your questions._' he thought as Pyrrha handed him his rifle, knife, and SMG with a smile. '_But not now._'


	6. Lesson of the Day

Face remained silent as the class copied the writing on the board down, calmly watching the class with his arms folded and legs crossed whilst he leaned on the table. He occasionally sniffed, but even then that was silent, making him seem like he was suspicious as he scanned around the room with narrowed eyes. More than half the class had now finished, and silently watched their teacher as they waited for him to continue. A few students were still writing. "Fuckin' Christ, you kids are slow," he muttered, shaking his head. A few of the teens around the classroom rolled their eyes at his insult. They preferred not to be called 'kids'. And as awesome as it was the day before, when he utterly destroyed Glynda, it didn't change the fact that 'sometimes' he could be an asshole. Finally, Jaune put his pen down and looked to Face. "You done, Timebomb?" Nobody understood.

"U-Uh...sir?" Jaune stuttered, tilting his head. Face remained in the position he'd been in.

"Timebomb." he repeated. "Y'know, light fuse, run away? Takes a while to get going, but gets there in the end, and it's worth it."

"I-I...don't understand..."

"_Learn_ to understand," Face replied casually, standing himself up and moving in front of the board. "Same goes for all of you; I guarantee by the end of my time here, I'll have a name for all of you. And remember, the more you mock other people's names, the worse yours'll end up being. Ain't that right, Timebomb?" Jaune paused, and smiled slightly. Timebomb. Not too bad a name. Kinda cool.

"Can we get this going?" Weiss groaned from the front, prompting Face to give his usual, condescending smirk at her. "We're here to learn to be the best, and we won't learn that by listening to your inner monologue." Face responded by reaching back and flicking his kukri out, before pointing the bowie knife briefly at Weiss.

"Good point, Frosty," Face whistled. Weiss rolled her eyes as Face went back to the board.

"Frosty," she muttered, "Great." Yang gave a mocking grin.

"_Chill out,_ Weiss, stop being so _cold_." The blonde smiled, extending a hand and waiting for someone to high five it. Nobody did, prompting her to slowly put her hand down with a slightly dejected expression.

_**Meanwhile, in cp_steel...**_

Spy's hand twitched at the table. Not too much, but he knocked a glass off onto the floor. He gasped in surprise at the tinkling glass, looking down at it through a pair of Deus Specs and wide brimmed green Chapeau that concealed his eyebrows, making it difficult to register if he was frowning or not. The new Sniper, a fellow with a motorbike jacket similar to Face's, no headwear, and a small goatee was sitting on the other side of the table with his feet up as he read the newspaper and smoking. He lowered his reading material and raised a brow at Spy. "What happened?" he asked. Spy looked back at the table, rubbing his hand thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure..." he replied, shaking his head gently. "I think somebody else in the universe wanted a high-five, and got none: I felt the feeling of rejection from here, and my hand twitched, knocking the glass down." Sniper shrugged, raising the paper again.

"Not my problem," he whistled, prompting the room to fall silent again as the only two Mercenaries left in the facility waited for the rest of the team to come back from celebrating a victory. Slowly, Spy looked at Sniper. Drawing a breath and somehow seeing the look Spy was giving him, Sniper continued reading. "I bloody hope you're not gonna try and fuck my brains out, mate."

"No," Spy grinned. "But I do think I want to go and find a contract. You want to come?" Sniper's paper immediately rustled down, and he looked at him with a serious expression.

"Too bloody right, I do." Sniper replied, throwing his paper down on the table and running out of the room with Spy.

_**Meanwhile, in the classroom that Face had commandeered...**_

"Now, you've all written this down," he said to the class, gesturing to the board. "But do any of you know what it actually means?" He was met with blank stares. "Thought not." He rolled his eyes, and pointed the tip of his knife at the top left diagram that depicted a Da-Vinci style Beowulf anatomy, arms and legs extended. As he turned to look at it, Blake decided to have her own attack on him.

"And we're all to presume that you _do_?" she piped up. Ruby, Weiss, and Yang didn't really want to tell her to shut up, since she wouldn't stop angrily chewing them out after the lesson the day before. All they'd done then was laugh when he'd laid a verbal smack down on Cardin, so none of them really wanted to think about how mad she'd get if they told her to stop being angry with him. As usual, Face turned and raised a brow, however this time there was no trace of mockery as he stared Blake in the eyes.

"Blake," he said finally, "No matter your..._views_ as to how I teach, bear in mind that _I_ am the teacher, and my job is to teach you things. But _you_ are a student, and your job is to listen. So as far as you're concerned, _I do know this._"

"But you actually don't," Blake cut in, "So you're not doing your job." Face gritted his teeth.

"My _duty_ here doesn't need me killing anyone, like you think I do," he snarled. "But if you continue to test me I'll see just how much damage this knife does against Aura."

"You want to go back to jail?" Blake shot back. The class watched the exchange of harsh words with great worry. "Even if you did beat me down, you'd stay rotting in a cell for the rest of your life."

Face narrowed his eyes, and Blake did the same.

"If you've got something you're trying to prove, you do it now," Face snapped, jabbing a finger at her. "Because if you even _try _to take me down, I'll put a bullet through your head so fast you wouldn't even be able to comprehend that you were fucking dead. So shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and listen." Nobody even breathed as Face continued glaring at Blake. Finally, the girl leaned back in her seat with a victorious smirk.

"Fine," she said mockingly. Face pulled a sarcastic grin, and twirled his knife.

"Good! I'm glad we got that one straightened out, Shiner," he replied casually as he returned to the board. It took Blake a few seconds to register what the nickname actually meant, and she growled in pure, unfiltered rage as her eye stung in remembrance to the injury. The rest of team RWBY winced at the incredibly sharp insult, and just prayed that Blake didn't do anything stupid now she was baring teeth and clenching her pencil hard enough that the wood began to crack. Face, meanwhile, continued as nonchalant to the anger he had caused as ever. "Now then! After that brief yelling match, I'll begin to explain _why_ dead things taste better when you cook them. Take notes, you may well need them at some point." A few class members muttered that their teacher was insane as they flipped open notepads to write things down.

As psychotic and grim as those things may be.

_**Ten minutes pass.**_

"...and so it was when I was too hungry, with no tigers in sight, which was the point that I decided that he was no longer worth having as a hostage, and decided to pull out his teeth, then ram them into his eyes. Then I ate his dog." Face said almost proudly, leaning on his desk and checking his fingernails. The class was almost bone white in horror at what he'd just recounted so calmly. "But the thing is, I disposed of his body _legally_. Since he was already listed on Mann Co.'s 'Top 100 People to Murder Before You Get Arrested' list, I received a congratulatory bouquet from Saxton Hale and a sausage roll." After a few seconds where somebody may or may not have had a heart attack, Velvet raised a hand. "Ah! Velvet! Haven't heard from you for ages!"

"Um...hi." The Faunus girl carefully waved, slightly concerned that he was plotting horrible things whilst looking at her. "Yeah, I was wondering, did they honestly pay you for murdering people? It seems a bit...immoral."

"Course they did!" Face replied cheerfully. "In one year of work, I made well over seventeen million dollars. It was immediately stolen by some charismatic guys with masks, but then I got paid _again_ to not talk about that." A few jaws dropped. Some guys stole millions from him, and he just didn't seem to care.

"And they just...got away?" Nora asked. "You didn't hunt them? What about your money?"

"Nope, not a problem for me," he replied calmly. "As I mentioned, I pretty much lived life as a survivor, hunted my food, and gathered my supplies. Having money didn't make a difference to me, so outside of that instance, it all remained untouched for at least fourteen years." A few more jaws fell open.

"How much did you get paid for all that time?" Cardin piped up. Face thought for a moment.

"Eh...two hundred and twenty." Face replied, scratching the back of his head almost in embarrassment. A few students snickered at the low wages. Two hundred and twenty thousand? Considering the average wage in Vale was about forty thousand lien a year, then that wasn't impressive for fourteen years. "Million." Those students stopped.

"You could buy a small country with that much money," Lie Ren noted. "Why did you not?"

"Look at me, Mr. Ren," Face sighed, putting his hands behind his back and beginning to pace along the front of the room. "And be honest: Do you think any living human being would want to live in a country run by yours truly?"

"Well, professor," Pyrrha raised her hand calmly. "I certainly wouldn't mind that country, so long as training would be in abundance." Face gave her his usual 'what?' look, and a few students rolled their eyes.

"So...wait, I've got this right?" Face began. "You. Would live in the Remnant equivalent. To Australia."

"Yes," beamed the rather polite student.

"And you wouldn't mind the fact that you would be mocked for not getting into fights, weighing over three hundred pounds, whilst having no brain power?"

"I'm certain I could convince them fighting wouldn't be a problem, I have helped defeat a Deathstalker."

"So you would enjoy being attacked by wild animals and people that're still upset over Tom Jones?"

"Who's Tom Jones?"

"A dead person."

"Oh. Well...I suppose I wouldn't mind it, then."

"You. I like you. You're polite. Are you efficient?"

"I suppose so."

"What's your plan to kill everyone you meet?"

"Um..."

"C'mon, I can't officially consider you a Professional if you're polite, efficient, but don't have a plan to kill everyone you meet. The Professional's Standard."

"That's not real."

"It bloody well is, I lived by it for fifteen years of my life."

"So you lived by something as real as your love life?" Yang asked, raising a brow and smirking as she folded her arms and the class began 'ooh'ing' at the daily banter delivery.

"You say that like you know what it's like to have been with multiple people at once," Face shot back, grinning. Just then, Cardin piped up.

"_Sllllllut!"_ he called out. Immediately, everyone but Face cringed at the imminent smackdown. He understood, though. Kind of.

"Knock yourself out," he whistled, looking at Yang and gesturing to Cardin. She smiled back.

"Mmm...I think I'll wait until he's not expecting it." She turned to look at him. "Sleep with an eye open." Cardin swallowed, and immediately began to rethink his choice of words.

"Well, someone's learning." Face scratched the back of his head, and put his hand in his pocket as he began pacing.

"The only thing I've learned from you is how to make people fear you," Yang replied calmly. "I suppose I should thank you for that."

"Well, no problem. You're certainly welcome to go haunting people with me on Halloween, if that's your thing."

"No, no it isn't. We're all too old for Halloween."

"You're _never_ too old to dress up!" Face laughed. "Last year, I wore a pink unicorn hat and pulled a guy's arms off, and the year before, I killed a giant flying eyeball whilst wearing a top hat! It was great fun!"

"How much did your company pay you to shut up when you were robbed?" Weiss asked sarcastically, raising a hand. "Because I'll sell my father's company and use all the money to get you to stop assaulting our ears." The class laughed.

"Who said my _employers_ paid me to shut up?" Face replied. "The bank robbers sent me a letter that told me that if I didn't tell anybody they'd stolen my seventeen million dollars, they'd give me seventeen million dollars." He paused. "Wait a second."

Just then, the double doors to Face's side slammed open, and instinctively, he reached for his revolver and turned on the spot. Rather than the SWAT breaching team he had been expecting (he liked to flip the table for cover when that happened), Professor Oobleck was standing in the doorway with a pair of students behind him and dragging a large trolley with a sheet over a very large object. "Ah! Professor Face!" cried the green-haired man excitedly, before zipping over to stand in front of him. "I have exciting news for you!"

"Can't be any less exciting than being told to go to a family funeral, let's hear it," Face replied casually. Oobleck didn't even seem fazed by the grim statement, turning to the two boys by the door.

"Bring it in, boys!" he called over. The two nodded, and began to push the large trolley in. The taller boy had combed blue hair with a set of goggles on his fringe, whilst his companion, a Faunus with a monkey tail, had a blonde mess of hair. As Face narrowed his eyes at the Faunus, he was certain he recognized him from somewhere. Blake certainly understood this, and didn't make eye contact.

She just hoped that Sun didn't recognize Face either.

The trolley rolled in front of Face's desk, and Oobleck proudly pulled the sheet back to reveal the still-twitching corpse of an Ursa. It was definitely larger than Face had expected it to be, being almost twice his height even lying down. He didn't want to think about how tall it was in combat.

Actually, he did, because he'd always wanted to repeat what he did with the Giant Soldier Robot when Gray Mann attacked cp_steel, where he clambered up it, rammed a knife into its face, and then unloaded an SMG clip into its head until it fell down and he commando rolled off. It would have definitely been cool, had he not have been grabbed by the Giant Heavy and had his limbs slowly removed.

Regardless, he placed his hands into his pockets and began pacing around it as Oobleck looked over it with his coffee in hand. "An Elder Ursa Major. Been alive for hundreds of years. We found this one trying to infiltrate the rear of the school, and we shot it with an experimental paralysis dart."

"So it's still alive?" Face whistled, opening its eyelid. The eye inside looked back at him, and he was certain that the creature was sizing him up as well.

"Absolutely," Oobleck replied as the two students went to stand over by team RWBY as the class began to speak amongst themselves. "All life functions are fine, except for its kidneys because one of the ingredients to the paralysis agent was alcohol."

"So it's alive _and_ drunk." Face said. "And here I was thinking that a witch in a secretary outfit was weird."

"Alive, drunk, and yours to use," Oobleck corrected, sipping his coffee. "I remembered you mentioning that you didn't have a subject for today's lesson, so here it is."

"And it's being executed and disposed of here," Face nodded, patting Oobleck on the shoulder. "Thanks. Cheers, Oobleck."

"No problem, my good man! Although now you owe me coffee." Face chuckled and rolled his eyes as Oobleck and his students left the room. However, as he began to make his way over to his desk, the monkey Faunus boy pushed a shoulder roughly into Face as he went by, leaving with his hands in his pocket.

"Fuckin' twat..." Face muttered, dusting his shoulder and continuing his walk to his desk. "Right, kids!" he yelled over the noise, prompting the students to gradually quieten down. "Who here...is a fan of mercy?" No response except confused glances. "No? Nobody likes mercy?" Finally, a girl in the back with a beret and dark sunglasses raised a hand.

"What do you mean when you say mercy, sir?" she asked. Face grinned, and gestured to the immobile but conscious Ursa in the centre of the room.

"It's alive!" he announced cheerfully. "Breathing! Viva la Vida! And it's also the test subject for this next part of the lesson. So if all of you want to watch it suffer with no way to end the pain it's going through, then that's your choice. Unless, of course, somebody wants to show mercy...?" He trailed off his sentence, gesturing with his hands. There was no response, again. Everybody was either too confused, disgusted, or intrigued to bother replying. "No? Well then." Quite calmly, Face didn't hesitate to go to the other side of the Ursa and deliver a heavy boot to the side of it, flipping it off the trolley and onto the almost conveniently placed sheet. It let out an almost painful grunt as it fell onto its bone-plated back, and its limbs flopped uselessly by its side. Face paused.

"So it can still feel things." he said at a normal volume. "Good, it had this coming." And without further hesitation he went over to its kneecap, drew his revolver, and unflinchingly put a .44 round through its knee. The roar of pain was near deafening, but all the creature could do was move its head in obvious pain whilst Face began fishing around in the wound. There was a barely audible sound of bone fragments flicking together gently as he moved his fingers through the mess of mangled meat and broken bones. Finally, he found what he was looking for, and ripped it free, much to the Ursa's discomfort. In his hand, he was holding one of the bones from the Ursa's leg. However, it differed in that the point closest to the ball of the kneecap was the perfect size for a blade hilt, and the bone itself stretched a foot in length. He held it up. "Any ideas what you could do with this?"

"Turn it into a knife?" Jaune asked. Face span and pointed to him.

"BOOM! Short fuse today, Timebomb, I like it!" Face grinned, making a pistol gesture towards Jaune. The boy smiled as Face returned to the class. "Correct! The main shin bone of an Ursa leg can be fairly easily removed and sharpened, making a very effective knife or 'shank', as they call them in prison. It doesn't just have to be a bone, either: You can use a stick, a rock, a larger piece of wood, a toothbrush, anything. As long as it's big enough to hold in your hand, and just the right size for a knife, you can sharpen it then use it for a quick fallback plan if things go south." To demonstrate his point, he moved to his desk and picked up his knife, quickly scraping it against the bone to produce a rapid series of scratch sounds as white bone meal flew everywhere like shrapnel. It was almost surprising to see how quickly he could convert something so simple into a weapon.

And after a few more seconds of cringe-worthy grinding noises, the piece of leg had been converted into a solid, bone-white spike with a handle. He calmly put his metal knife on his desk, and held his makeshift dagger up. "This small, white spike has the capabilities to save your life." He said it aloud, almost matter-of-factly. "Let's just say an Ursa's coming at you, and your weapon's been thrown away! What're you gonna do?" Yang raised a hand.

"Punch it in the face," she said flatly.

"But your weapon's been thrown away."

"My weapons are strapped to my wrist. They're shotguns."

"...two things. One, that is the most genius idea I have ever heard. Two, let's say they're out of ammo or something."

"She still punches like a freight train," Cardin piped up, embarassed. His cheek hurt slightly at the memory of when he tried hitting on her. Face made a mental argument about how he'd taken pistol rounds with more force, but didn't bother saying it aloud.

"Whatever. For anybody else, you would whip out your trusty Urshank, and do this." Face punctuated it by turning around and beginning to repeatedly stab the Ursa lying on its chest. The animal groaned in pain at the stabbings as its lifeblood leaked from punctures in its side. There was no sound from the shanking except a quiet _tik _ noise with every entrance.

_tik tik tik tik tik tik tik_

It didn't stop, keeping an almost perfect rhythm. By the time Face had finished after about a minute, his hand was covered in blood and the white spike was a bloody crimson. The Ursa just lay there shivering, and Face held the knife up. "Just like that, folks," he announced. "How many stabs? At least fifty. Or more. But I still hurt it. Better than dying like a pussy ass bitch." Weiss groaned loudly and threw her hands up slightly.

"This is ridiculous," she complained, "Nobody would ever even have one of those with them, let alone get close enough to an Ursa to use it."

"And if it picks you up?" Face asked, folding his arms and raising a brow. Blood dropped from his new shank.

"What?"

"They pick you up. Ursas are known to pick people up and use their bony external skulls to headbutt their victims to death. They also hold you a few feet from their faces when doing this. What're you going to do in that situation?"

Weiss straightened up as though she knew the answer. She always knew the answer. "Pull out Myrtenaster, raise it up, an-"

"That would imply that your..._needle_ can penetrate its thick hide. Maybe with Beowulves, but not large Ursas. What do you do in that situation?"

"Stab it."

"With what?"

"Myrtenaster."

"You're only a few feet away from its face. You'll have a difficult time manoeuvring that meter long sword into a viable stabbing position. Were it me in your situation, I'd do this." Ignorant to Weiss' (and everyone else's) protests, Face took his shiv, moved to the Ursa's head, and shifted it to look towards the class so they could see what he was doing. It opened its eyes, seeing more prey, but its body refused to operate. Ensuring its eye was open, Face gave the side of his knife a small kiss, before placing it in front of the Ursa's eyeball. He forced it at a slow pace, but firmly, into the socket, slowly twisting the blade whilst the beast's head thrashed in vain protest. Blood came spurting from the wound like a burst water balloon as the bone shard forced its way through red eye substance and began to rip and tear its way through the visual nerves of the Ursa's left eye with a sound like crunching paper. At this point, the Ursa was screeching in agony, and a good quarter of the students in the class stood up and just walked out with their heads down.

Nobody wanted to see this.

Ren leaned over to Pyrrha, Jaune, and Nora, his frown the same as theirs. "I know that's a Grimm, but this isn't right," he said, calm tone betraying the extreme worry and disgust.

"I agree," Pyrrha nodded. "He surely could have killed it before he did this. This...this is too much."

"Eh, at least we know it's dead," Nora shrugged. She got more than a few looks of shock from her team, prompting her to look back innocently. "What? That Ursa was an Elder Ursa. I heard them saying it. The older it is, the more people it's probably killed. So it kind of had this coming."

"_Nothing_ would have ever had this coming, Nora," Jaune sighed. "This is inhumane."

Finally, after another minute, Face finally stood up slightly, put his boot against its neck, and wrenched the spike free of the burst eyeball, a trail of gore and nerves linking the empty socket to the tip of the shank. He finally stood, and sighed almost contentedly as the Ursa made quiet moans of agony. He turned, and faced the much smaller, more alarmed class. "And is that fucker going to headbutt me now, Frosty?" he asked Weiss, arms outspread. "I don't bloody well think so."

Weiss remained silent, staring at the Ursa in...what? She didn't know. Horror? Disgust? Sympathy? The feeling that it had deserved it? It was a Grimm, after all. But what Face just did was inhumane. Nothing could have ever deserved something that cruel. And how could he be so unmoved by what he'd just done?

Yang looked over to her teacher, watching him almost calmly brushing the stray pieces of gore from his clothes. He shot his victimized Ursa a glare from the side, listening to it weakly crying out for its pack. "Dirty little fucker, I tell you what." Face whistled, before twirling the knife in his fingers and giving it a quick flick to throw the blood from it. The blonde glared at him.

"That was disgusting!" she cried, standing slightly with her fists on the table. "How could you do something like that and not even care what you'd done?"

"I used to do that on a daily basis," Face glared back. "I have done it to men, I have done it to women. Many of them were undeserving of what my client paid me to do, but I did it, and I just walked away. Every. Single. Time. If you think it bothers me to do this to a creature that's probably killed a hundred innocent families over its lifespan, you are _sorely_ mistaken."

"I don't care that you're going to kill it," Yang spat, "But I _do_ care that you're dragging it to death without caring that it's still a living creature!"

"I've killed living creatures for most of my life, Yang. I've tortured women to death under the orders of disgruntled Soviet mobsters. I've ripped a man's teeth out to get some educational resources for a dentist. I've walked into police stations during SWAT training day and killed every soul in the building. I have snapped a tiger's jaw and beaten it to death with it. I've pulled off a charging Rhino's horn whilst impaled with it and then stabbed it through the skull. So killing this overgrown Grizzly isn't going to cause me a morality problem."

"Well, _we_ have a problem with it," Blake cut in, standing up. "It's inhumane, cruel, and nothing deserves this!"

"Nobody ever does, Weiss." Face calmly gave the bone shank a twirl, before slipping it into one of the belt loops on his hip. Most of the remaining blood simply scraped off on the fabric, soaking into his trousers, but if it bothered him it was unnoticeable. He finally returned to looking at the rest of the class. "Anyway! One-sided arguments out of the way, who would be willing to recreate that as evidence you were watching?" No hands went up, and Face rubbed his face as he sighed. "Fine. Fine! Extra credit to whoever does it." Still, no hands. Face shrugged. "Is this because none of you paid attention? Am I gonna need to do that again?" At this point, people were re-entering the classroom, and paused on hearing the sentence just in case they'd need to turn around and walk out again.

Begrudgingly, a hand finally raised, and Face smirked with his hand on the hilt of his shank. He exhaled, and looked up. "Well volunteered, Velvet."

A few jaws fell open as the second-year Faunus shifted past the rest of her team on the row, and began to make her way to the front. "Velvet?" Jaune piped up. The girl looked at him with a flat expression as she went to the front.

"Yes?" she replied in a smooth Australian accent. Jaune sat up.

"W-Well, I, ah, d-didn't know...you would do this...sort of, uh, _thing._" Velvet continued making her way to the front.

"I normally wouldn't," she said calmly, standing next to Professor Face. With an almost expectant smirk, Face extended his hand, holding the hilt of the shank towards Velvet. In an almost eerily calm way, she took the knife, and looked down at the heavily wounded Ursa.

"So, you saw what I did, correct?" Face asked, putting his hands behind his back. Velvet nodded. "Judging by your Aussie accent, this should be preferable for you." Velvet looked back at him with a relatively unreadable expression.

"I'd prefer mercy."

Then, without even a single pause, she dropped the shiv, grabbed Face's revolver from its holster, and with the accompaniment of a loud **boom**, she put a fist sized hole through the Ursa's head, spattering the surrounding area with gore and silencing the creature for good. The rest of the class stayed absolutely silent, and the sound of _'Record'_ buttons being pressed to stop filming became apparent. Face, to everyone's surprise, didn't flip out at her. He didn't shoot her a glare, turn to face her, or even sigh; he didn't do anything, really. He remained standing with his arms folded, flat-eyed expression not leaving his face as he looked down on the mangled head. Velvet remained with her neutral expression and a smoking gunbarrel as she calmly lowered the revolver, twirled it in her finger, and then expertly passed it back to Professor Face. The Sniper kept his look at the dead animal, and one-handedly accepted the gun back into his waiting hand, giving it a twirl of his own before slipping it away.

Most of the eyes in the room stayed on Velvet as she calmly walked back to her seat, politely shuffling past her teammates before carefully sitting herself down. For the next minute or so, nobody spoke, until Face suddenly cleared his throat. His normal smile returned, and he faced the class.

"Last period of the day before dinner," he said calmly. "Who wants barbecue?"

_**One hour of carving and commandeering the observation balcony near the classroom later...**_

To Weiss, Blake, and Yang, Face was an asshole.

A psychotic hitman.

Crazed gunman.

Not even close to being the 'professional' he claimed to be.

But if there was only one thing they liked about him, it was that the idea of a spontaneous class barbecue on the observation deck at sunset was brilliant. It was made better by the fact that he was a surprisingly good cook.

That is, even considering that his favoured fuel for cooking the legs of Ursa was gunpowder being sprinkled into the grill, causing a loud bang when he haphazardly poured a potent explosive onto the flames beneath the bars.

As they all sat watching the sun beginning to set, teams RWBY and JNPR were sitting on two separate benches, all eight eating Ursa meat. They'd seen it being made, and how brutal it was, but they admitted it tasted pretty good. The two teams remained silent as they ate, until Nora finally piped up. "That was a fun lesson." She received more than a few confused looks at the comment. Overall, Blake seemed the most horrified.

"Don't tell me you're being serious, Nora," she said sternly, frowning at the much smaller girl on the other bench. "He tortured an Ursa to near death in front of the class."

"But we're eating that Ursa right now, and it's delicious!" Nora replied cheerfully. Her hands and mouth were covered in more grease than should have actually been normal for someone her age, which generally seemed to mean she enjoyed what she was eating.

"Blake, admit it," Yang sighed, "This is actually some really good food." The Faunus girl responded by shooting a glare at her partner, who raised her hands defensively. "What? I'm just saying." Blake groaned, and remained seated, folding her arms.

"The food is irrelevant," she said flatly, glaring ahead towards where the sun was setting and bathing her features in a golden orange glow. "What I care about is that we're having to take lessons from this..._criminal_! Has he even taught us anything since he's been here?" Pyrrha raised a hand.

"He taught us new words, I suppose," she said calmly, gently cutting into some of the meat with a personal knife and fork set. She turned to Jaune. "For example, I think Jaune is a bloody amazing bastard." The blonde boy almost spat out everything in his mouth.

"Mmmph?!" was all that came out as Pyrrha smiled at him, and everybody looked at her in amazement. Her smile dropped.

"Did...I say something?" she asked, genuinely curious. When nobody responded, she dropped her head, and continued eating in silence.

"But look at him," Blake grimaced, gesturing to Face. He had left the barbecue in the hands of Professor Oobleck, and was sitting on the head of one of the large stone gargoyles around the balcony, legs crossed in an awkward looking position as he bit into the meat like it was a chicken drumstick. Occasionally, he would turn his head and spit out a piece of bone, before continuing to chew on it. "He isn't a teacher befitting of Beacon academy."

"Come on, Blake, he's just a supply teacher," Ruby cut in. "He'll be gone before you know it." Blake sat back slightly.

"Gone back to his own world, I hope."

"Heard all that!" Face piped up, extending his middle finger towards the group as he continued facing the sunset and sitting on the giant stone lion, continuing to eat without even looking at them. "You should bloody well know by now that my world's a shithole, and this place is probably better than my world, so I might end up setting up shop here and killing Grimm. Tasty little fuckers, I tell you what." Blake groaned, and folded her arms. "Ain't that right, Timebomb?"

"Uh, yes sir!" Jaune replied quickly, raising the piece he was trying to stomach. He wasn't really a fan of eating the enemy, but he did admit it tasted alright. Though, it was greasy. Very, _very_ greasy.

And he was pretty sure he had accidentally found and bitten into the bullet that was in the Ursa's kneecap.

"Good lad!" Face called over. "See, Shiner? Timebomb gets it." Blake was just about to see if he could survive a drop from the gargoyle to concrete when the doors to the balcony swung open. A good portion of the class looked over to the doorway to see Professor Goodwytch standing there with her usual stern expression.

"Just what is going on up here?" she asked Face. The Sniper was quick to put his food inbetween his teeth, hop up into a crouch, and balance walk back onto the balcony. Once he'd removed the food from his mouth and was standing in front of Glynda, he spoke.

"Killed an Ursa. Put the dead body to good use." Face explained as his female co-worker stood with her arms folded and fingers drumming on her bicep, an expectant expression on her face. "Tasted pretty good."

"And you convinced Professor Oobleck to assist you in this unscheduled use of the balcony?" she asked flatly. Face looked over, to see that Oobleck had already dashed off down the hall.

"You say that like he was actually here," he replied calmly. "Well, he was. Kind of. For, like, five minutes. I think. Whatever."

"This is still the teacher's balcony."

"Are there ever any teachers _using_ the balcony?" Face shot back. "Far as I know, they all stay down in the staff room, drink coffee, and laugh obnoxiously loudly at unfunny jokes about politics." Glynda sighed, and closed her eyes.

'_He's not wrong._'

"That's...ugh. Fine. Use the balcony." She let out a small huff, and stalked away. Before she left, she turned back. "Remember you're cleaning this up, and you're needed in my chambers to finish up what you were doing the night before."

"Yeah, alright, I got it," Face sighed, scratching the back of his head. "See you tonight." As soon as the doors closed, most of the students that caught a double meaning to Face needing to continue stitching her up grinned at him. "What?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," Yang whistled innocently, checking her nails. "Just, ah, what you and her were doing...last night."

"It's a private matter," Face grimaced, forcing team CFVY to stifle laughs.

"How private?" Weiss smirked.

"Private enough."

"Is it boosting your relationship with Goodwytch?" asked Coco.

"Well, apparently so, since she offers me a smile when I walk past. Before that, if she saw me doing something I'd normally do she'd threaten to whip me." Blake was still sitting with her arms folded, a fist to her mouth and face completely red as she held in extreme laughter. "I mean, holy shit, do you know how much damage those things could do? Some asshole back where I worked used to hit me with a whip to make me work harder, and it was fucking irritating and stang like a bitch."

"Where'd he whip you?" Yang asked. "Was it in your, ah, 'rear flank'?"

"No, it was normally on my arse for some reason. Soldier was a twat sometimes."

"But I suppose with your 'late-night ventures' with Professor Goodwytch, you're getting used to being whipped?"

"Nope, not at all. She hardly brings it out. Normally, she's actually lying down without clothing, so my job's easier." Nobody heard whatever else he was saying as Blake broke down with laughter, cracking everyone else in the area.

Face didn't get it. He was just saying that Glynda would normally lie down nude to let him stitch her wounds closed.

What was so funny about that?


	7. A Trip Down Town

Around two hours later, Face walked up to Glynda's door with a medic bag slung over his body. It was about ten o'clock at night, which was normally a time when Face would be fully awake due to a massive amount of coffee for the past fifteen years, so going to Glynda's room was of no issue to him. He'd had a good dinner, so he wasn't on an empty stomach, at least. The hallway was empty: Due to Glynda's stature in the school and the fact that she could probably kill most of the other teachers with a dodgy look, as tempting as it was, nobody wanted to risk seeing her naked.

Thumbing the strap of the medic bag idly as he knocked on her door, Face glanced around down the corridor to see if anybody was there. Not that he gave a damn, of course, but it was more interesting than looking at a wooden door. For a few seconds, he thought he saw movement down the hall, but his attention was immediately drawn back as a hand shot out through Glynda's door and pulled him inside almost instantly, giving Face barely enough time to let out a small yell of surprise. Once he was in, the door slammed behind him, and he was half expecting to have to fight something due to the sudden nature of the event. Instead, he came face to face with Glynda's less-than-pleased face. "You're late," she grimaced, folding her arms over the towel that covered her body.

"You're welcome," Face whistled, unslinging the medic bag and moving over to a nearby table to get the medical gear out. Glynda took this as her opportunity to go over to the side of the bed and sit down. "Had to get rid of the spare meat, so I fed it to some of the captive Grimm."

"That's cruel."

"Ah, the bastards hardly even remember they have an arse sometimes, they won't give a fuck about eating their cousins." Face was in the process of removing a few reels of thread from the bottom of the bag when he exhaled again. "So, Glynda," he began, "What am I closing this evening?"

"Well, I was observing some sparring today, and a rather large crystal of Dust was sent flying my way. It ripped my shirt, and put a decent sized cut onto my stomach. I've had it bandaged up all day."

"How big's the cut?"

"A few inches across, navel to lower rib."

"Oh, that sounds bad. I can sort it, though, no problem. Lie on your back so I can see." Glynda's face went slightly red in embarrassment. Face remained indifferent. "Is there a problem, Professor?"

"Yes, there certainly is!" she snapped. "I'm not going to let you see my naked body!" Face raised a brow.

"I saw it yesterday."

"That was my back, and that's different. I'm not going to let you look at my chest."

"I don't give a fuck about your body, I'm here to stitch wounds shut. Plus, I'm more interested in weapons than women, so there's no chance that I have any dodgy plans."

"That's...no comfort." Glynda sat up, wrapping the towel around herself quickly. Face sat back on the stool and leaned forward, frowning.

"For the past fifteen years, I haven't paid any heed to anything outside of survival, and work." he said flatly.

"And your work was survival?" Glynda asked, deciding that it would be better to just put some pajamas on.

"It was. One wrong move, I could be machine-gunned, decapitated, gutted, disintegrated, stabbed, shot, blasted to pieces, incinerated, or beaten to death. One missed shot, and I would get ripped into by my team for letting the enemy capture the point. A failed attempt to push the enemy back, and we all went down in flames, literally. If I had my mind on anything else, people died. I could not focus on anything else. So as far as I'm concerned, just because I'm away from all that doesn't mean I should stop focusing on survival over everything."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Glynda asked, standing herself up and going over to a chest of drawers to get some sleeping attire. Face chuckled slightly, continuing to stare at where she had been sitting a moment before.

"My point in its most basic form?" he smirked. "I'm not interested in women." Glynda paused in the process of pulling her pajama bottoms up, and looked at him.

"So..." she said carefully. "...you're...ga-?"

"No, fuck off with that," Face snapped. Glynda quickly began putting her clothes on, being careful not to reveal her private areas to the man. "I'm saying that I'm not after love, romance, a relationship, whatever. My interests remain as getting home, and getting back at who dragged me here."

"Someone brought you here?"

"Of course they bloody well did. Someone tricked me to coming here. Someone _fucked_ me. And I'm going to find out who they really were." He looked up at Glynda. "But first, you need that gash stitched." Glynda sighed as she buttoned up her pajama top.

"I'll get it done," she replied. "Just...not tonight. Why don't you go down to the city tonight? You don't have any lessons set for tomorrow, and I did overhear you mentioning that you wanted to go visit 'Junior' at his club." Face raised a brow in thought as he began to pack up the medical supplies.

"Is that even legal?" he asked. "Thought I wasn't allowed off Beacon premises unless given specific orders to by the police or Beacon staff." He turned to face Glynda, who was standing in a set of white button pajamas with her arms folded. "Is it an order?"

"It could be," she smiled back. "But if it were, the second half of the orders would be to attend the Staff Sparring event and have a few fights." Face rolled his eyes as he made his way to the door.

"Sure, why the hell not," he exhaled, scratching the back of his head, "Got nothing else to do except teaching."

"Excellent," Glynda nodded, pushing Face out the door. "You go have fun in town."

And with that, the door closed in Face's face, leaving him standing with a medic bag in front of Glynda's door. He gave it a brief look, before shrugging and deciding that he may as well go into town; He did say he would go visit Junior's club, and there were a few things he needed to go see if anybody had found his backpack.

If he was due to go to the Staff Sparring, he'd make sure nobody knew what the fuck was going on.

_**One airship ride with an obnoxiously talkative pilot later...**_

As the airship passed over the rooftops and the pilot finished explaining his divorce, Face grabbed his equipment, gripped his hat brow, and slid the door open at the side. Making sure the pilot, a fellow named Bile, had gotten into describing how he was regularly employed by a band of robbers to carry bags of stolen loot, Face used the distraction to hop out and land on the top of a small building. On landing, he rolled, and used his momentum to follow up with another roll and stop completely on his back. It hurt a fair bit, falling ten metres to a solid surface and rolling twice, but it didn't bother him much. Catching his breath and watching the airship fly towards the terminal, he finally stood up and made his way to the edge of the building roof before looking down.

There wasn't that much of a drop. A floor, at least, and he could land on a conveniently placed car to break his fall. As Face vaulted the small wall protecting people from falling off the roof, it would be now that it would be good to note that since he was from the late 1960's and hardly ever left the Steel facility, Face had absolutely no idea about the conception of car alarms, nor the fact that they tended to go off when something hit the vehicle in question at speed.

So, it was to the Sniper's surprise that the moment his feet touched the roof of the black Schneesmobile, the car began to emit a noise similar to that of an air raid siren, loudly ringing through the air and smashing the near silence of the streets. As he scrambled on the roof and fell onto the ground, the siren continued, and he was certain he could hear police sirens in the distance. He quickly got to his feet, and looked down the street. He could see the entrance to Junior's club quite a distance away, and the two guards near the door were looking towards the commotion down the road in interest. Before Face could even consider making a sprint down there, there was a sudden bang as a pair of striking white figures dropped down nearby.

Face shielded his eyes from the dust, and quickly put his rifle in his hands, pointing it into the smoke and rubble. He kept it level as the car alarm blared away in the background. It was difficult to know who was in that smoke because of the noise: Cops? SWAT? FBI? Saxton Hale?

He hoped to fucking Christ it wasn't Hale.

He was just about to back away and vault a nearby fence, when there was the sound of a charging energy weapon that rang apparent over the sound of the alarm, forcing him to remain still to see off the possible threat. Two silhouettes appeared in the smoke, before marching out into view and surprising Face. Rather than the two police officers he was expecting, standing in front of him was a pair of white robots holding rifles at hip height. They had no facial features like Gray Mann's robots he'd fought years before; those dullard, blank faces he'd come to recognize on robots were replaced by black glass plates in a shape similar to the eye-holes on that Spartan helmet he'd seen a BLU Soldier wearing once. Outside of that, they had no centre portions, instead having a set of pistons and a thick 'spine'. In spite of the fact that they were machines (an enemy that Face and a few others at Steel had once been given the pleasure of fighting, forcefully disassembling, and being dismembered by), there was something off about them. He didn't know how much damage they could take, but it wasn't something he wanted to test.

The robots, however, had different problems: They couldn't find the person who'd set off the alarm. There was no sign of a living thing in the alley: Just a weird object with a hat and glasses. That couldn't have set off the alarm, since it was more than likely a statue of some kind. Running diagnostics on Vale's artists and craftsmen to see if anybody had made the statue that lived nearby, the two robots began to advance further into the alleyway in order to find the person who'd just tried to steal the car. Face remained absolutely still with his rifle raised at the original position they had been in as the made their way around him. A few moments passed as the car alarm shut off automatically, and behind him, he could finally hear a door slam as the robots entered the building.

He finally lowered his rifle and exhaled, looking behind him to ensure they were gone. "That was bloody close," he muttered, scratching his head and beginning to make his way down the street towards Junior's club. "And here I was, thinking that Washington SWAT responded fast." Briefly remembering a botched assassination job a few years before, he decided it wouldn't be best to test out how good Vale's Anti-Terrorism Unit was and quickly began to jog down the street.

_**One argument with the doormen later...**_

As the doors slid open, Face was hit with the sound of heavy dance tunes and cheering people on the dance floor. Casting a brief glance around and squinting under the heavy laser use and strobe lighting, he began to make his way down to the platform-floor around the dance floor and walk around. He could definitely feel some eyes looking him over for his carriage of three guns and a machete, but that wasn't going to be an issue as long as they didn't turn it into an issue. Whilst he looked around to see if he could find Junior, he once again cursed his strange habit of constantly wearing sunglasses: The room was already dark, meaning that everything was even harder to see due to the polarized lenses.

Just then, he caught sight of a large figure leaning over at the bar counter, flanked by two women in white and red dresses, respectively. He smirked slightly, and began to make his way over to Junior's position. The club definitely had a few people that would more than likely try pulling money from him: Pickpockets, thieves, muggers, prostitutes. However, due to his distinctive lack of cash, the worst they could end up doing would be diving their hands into his pockets and then getting them cut off. This in mind, Face kept an eye out as he went between groups of people in case there was an opportunist among the dancers.

As he got closer to the tall figure near the bar, he realized that Junior wasn't just looking down at the bar: He was trying to ignore a group of drunks that were harassing him. The lead man, a Faunus with blonde hair, was constantly trying to put his hand over Junior's shoulder, only for it to be shrugged off immediately. Over the sound of loud music and talking, Face couldn't make out what he was saying, but obviously he said something wrong: Junior raised a hand without looking at the drunk, clicked, and immediately a pair of men in black suits and hats approached from seemingly nowhere, grabbed the man, and dragged him away. The rest of his group was quick to disperse into the crowds, fearing the wrath of Junior.

Face grinned.

It was just like being back in prison: Try and fuck up Junior, and his guys fuck you up. This was a public place, and it was just like the enclosed concrete building he'd been in for a few weeks.

Well, with less shower rape.

Face silently remembered to thank the warden for giving him use of the guard showers, and made his way over to Junior. He pushed his way in-between two groups of club-goers, and was just about to tap Junior on the shoulder when he felt a hand on his own shoulder. Quickly, he turned, to come face to face with one of Junior's guys. "No weapons in the club, man," the thug ordered. Face shrugged.

"Nobody stopped me at the door over it," he replied calmly, obviously lying since about ten minutes were wasted as he explained to the doormen that he wasn't a criminal. Again, that was a lie. "And what's to say I'll be getting them back when I'm leaving?" The man frowned.

"Time for you to leave, pal," he said suddenly, attempting to pull Face away. Without even a sign of any effort, Face brushed the hand off his shoulder.

"If it's any consolation, I'm just here to see Junior. Heard he was out of jail, and since I knew him from there, I figured I'd drop by and see him." The thug remained unconvinced, hand beginning to rest uneasily near his pistol.

"If you were in prison, I don't recognize you."

"What, you didn't see me egging on Jim Oxworth when he was stabbing that White Fang hate preacher with a sharpened toothbrush in the canteen?" The thug paused.

"What were you shouting?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Uhh...there was 'Ram it in his ears', 'Through the eye', and 'Oh my God, that was amazing, can I have a go?'. They're the ones I can remember shouting." The thug considered this, then let go of Face's shoulder.

"Alright, I remember you now," he said finally. "Just don't go shooting anything up, most of us have guns, too."

"Alright...I guess I'll keep that in mind?" Face muttered as the suited man walked away into the crowds, likely hunting for more people that might try and cause trouble. Just a shame that Face could probably break both his arms off and beat him to death with them. He shrugged after a brief pause, and continued on his way over to Junior.

Upon arrival, one of the two women that had been standing next to Junior had already began the process of eyeing him up. Judging by her relatively unamused facial expression, first impressions didn't seem too good: He was armed with three guns and a machete, was wearing a pair of sunglasses whilst indoors, had a black beard similar to Junior's, and was eyeing her up in return. She was fairly small, of a similar build to the other girl. Their faces seemed relatively similar, but what seemed to be the way of telling them apart was the colour of their clothing. The one who wasn't really paying much attention to Face was wearing a white-ish dress with blue accents, however the girl that was inspecting him was wearing a blood crimson dress with black accents. It was almost reminiscent of RED and BLU: Mercenaries on both teams would look almost exactly the same were it not for red and blue uniforms, silly hats, and ridiculous guns.

Face took this opportunity to make his presence known: Casually, he approached the bar and stood behind Junior. As he reached a hand out to tap him on the shoulder, air nearby whipped loudly, and three sharp objects went up against his throat. He didn't raise his throat up as a normal person would in that situation, instead choosing to put his hand back to his side and look back at the girl that was now threatening him. The unamused expression now carried the slightest impressions of a frown, and her until-then-unnoticed black claws were reached up to Face's throat. He raised a brow. "Claws. Wow." he said flatly. The girl continued staring at him.

"You realise that you're carrying weapons into a class establishment," she replied. Her voice had a strange bored, monotone element about it. "So it's kinda dumb that you're trying to tap the owner of the club on the shoulder so you can kill him." Face snorted.

"If I'd have wanted to kill him, I'd have shanked him in prison," he explained. Junior's ears pricked up at the familiar voice, and he quickly stood and turned.

"Face!" he smiled in surprise, extending a hand for Face to shake. "Didn't think I'd see you outta the joint!" Face shook his hand as the girl in red backed off and returned to standing at the bar.

"Surprisingly, neither did I," he replied. "Great to see you again, Junior."

"Likewise," Junior nodded, gesturing to the club. "Like it?"

"Oh, absolutely," Face whistled. "Where I'm from, a 'class establishment' meant you'd get shot in the face after five minutes instead of one. This is genuinely a nice change."

"Glad you're enjoying it. Didn't think you were much of a clubbing person, and here you are, visiting old Junior in Downtown Vale. What've you been up to?" Junior gestured to the barman to bring over a bottle of beer as he reclined against the bar, Face doing the same.

"You remember when that woman walked through the jail cells? Looked a bit like a secretary?"

"Ah, her," Junior grinned. "She was popular talk the day after. You'd think the guys had never seen a woman before."

"True," Face smirked, folding his arms. "But the thing is, apparently she was Glynda Goodwytch, one of the senior staff at Beacon. Came up to my cell with this 'Ozpin' guy and offered me a job for some reason."

"Which job?" Junior asked, genuinely intrigued.

"Substitute teacher. Supposed to be teaching Huntsmen and Huntresses how to survive in the wilderness."

"I figured they would already know how to handle themselves." Junior looked at one of the glass pillars that had been replaced since..._her_ visit. His jaw still ached a bit.

Bloody Hell, was that expensive.

"That's what I said!" Face cried. "But apparently, they needed to teach them how a 'hunter' survives. They didn't bear in mind the fact that I mentioned that for the past fifteen years, I've hunted _men_, so I'm not holding back on the Grimm they're throwing at me to use as teaching material."

"What, killing them?"

"Nah. Made it painful for an Ursa earlier. Shot out the kneecaps, ripped its leg bone out, turned it into a shank, then starting twisting it around in its eye."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. Then I called a Faunus girl to the front, and she grabs my revolver to put a hole in its head and 'mercy kill' it. Used the dead Ursa for a barbecue, so that was good."

"So you didn't get taken away for experimentation?" Junior asked. Face raised a brow at him.

"Experimentation? Who said anything about that?"

"Well, it's fairly well known that Glynda Goodwytch is legally allowed to requisition inmates that are in for life, for use in experiments and target practice. She rarely does it, so most of the guys figured that she was taking you away to use you for that. Guess not." Face frowned, as per his usual reaction to being told something.

"Well, I guess I'm not good target practice if I beat her in a fight." Junior paused, and looked to Face. "What?"

"You're trying to say...you beat _Glynda Goodwytch_ in a fight?"

"Well...yeah?"

"**The** Glynda Goodwytch."

"Yeah."

"The best Dust user in the kingdom."

"Yeah, it wasn't really that hard and I was only _nearly_ killed."

"I call bullshit."

"No, really, ask her."

"How am I gonna do that? I don't have her number and she'd probably kill everyone in my club and on my payroll."

"She's not too bad if you get to know her. All I did was stitch her wounds shut after the fight and she's kind of stopped being exceptionally moody towards me." Face paused, and looked at the two girls that were with Junior. They were now standing next to each other, both remaining flat in expression towards Face. He pointed a finger between the girls. "Who're these two?"

"Oh, right." Junior sighed, and stepped to the side, gesturing to girl in white and girl in red. "Face, this is Melanie, this is Miltia." The introduction came as a half-assed attempt to sound formal.

"And they hold what jobs here?" Face asked, putting his hands in his pockets. Junior paused.

"Uhhh...?"

"As in, what do they actually do, besides threaten people?" Face clarified. Miltia folded her arms and rolled her eyes.

"Uh...I guess they're kinda like enforcers? Occasionally we get people threatening to damage this club, so I send a couple of guys, and Melanie and Miltia their way. Teach 'em not to mess with Junior."

"Oh. Well, that makes sense." Face shrugged, and looked around the club. '_What else was I here for...? Oh yeah, my stuff._' "Hey, by the way, Junior?" Face asked. Junior raised a brow.

"Hm?"

"You didn't happen to see what they did with a brown backpack that might have been evidence from the dockyard, did you?"

"Not that I know of. There were a few federal guys going down to the evidence rooms in the prison with a few crates after you went to your cell, so maybe it was there. Why, did they not give it back?"

"No, they didn't," Face replied, scratching his stubble. "And the problem is, that one backpack contains all my weapons and gear I gathered for fifteen years. Pretty sure I'd end up needing some of it at some point."

"Ah. Well, I guess you could try appealing to the police to get it back. I mean, it's not like you could just break in and steal it, right?" Junior laughed. Melanie and Miltia joined in with their dulcid, monotone laughing, and Face joined in as well.

"Yeah, as if I would do that!"

_**One hour passes...**_

Face crouched down behind the bins in the side alley near the prison. Making sure nobody was looking, he pulled out a White Fang mask he'd found on the floor, then put it on. It went over his sunglasses easily, but it didn't mean it wasn't just as hard to see. "Perfect disguise..." he mused, before turning towards the direction he'd seen the prison supply department entrance and began to crouch towards it.

From his time in jail, he could remember nearly nobody using this entrance. According to Jim Oxworth, it had been disused since it was difficult for trucks to get in and out of, so nobody would be overlooking it. Face kept an eye out for anybody nearby, and looked over the wooden door in front of him.

He tested the handle.

Locked.

"Shit." Face considered blowing the lock off with his revolver, but without a suppressor, that'd be loud. However, to his luck, there was a flathead screwdriver on the floor next to him. Quickly grabbing it, he rummaged through his pockets until he found what he need. He removed Glynda's hairpin that he had...uh, _procured_, and placed it into the door along with the screwdriver. Carefully, he began to rotate the screwdriver, moving the hair pin around the lock carefully. For what felt like ten minutes, he kept working on the lock, until...

_ca-clitik_

"Gotcha," Face smirked, before grabbing the handle and gently pushing the door open. Inside, it was dark, and in the echoes from the building, he could hear prison wardens walking on the steel catwalks connecting cells on the upper floors.

So they were still awake.

Face drew his machete, tipped his hat brow a slight lower, and began to advance into the building.

"This should be fun."


	8. Stealth?

If he was being honest with himself, Face didn't expect his infiltration to succeed. He'd expected to get through a couple of doors, but then get spotted immediately by a guard or warden.

But there he was: Down in the prison archives, looking for the evidence from the shipyard, and he had probably picked a good twenty door locks and stole five keycards to get down there. Down the hall, he could hear the heavy footfalls of a guard, and the beam of a torch shone past the door as the uniformed man walked by. Face cast a brief glance around, before continuing to try and rewire the circuitry of the keycard reader, and that was only because he'd scoured the dark, empty offices and not found a single keycard. That meant he was having to rely on his limited electrician skills to try and reset the four-digit button lock on the evidence room door. He winced as yet another spark came and ran a shock through his finger.

"Sonofabitch..." he murmured, raising the brow of his hat slightly as he contemplated cutting through all the cables. He did, however, remember hearing about keycard readers that would set off a silent alarm when they had their power disconnected, once again from his trusted heister friend, Jim Oxworth. He knew just about everything involving the criminal underworld of Remnant, about security companies and systems, and had well over three hundred heists successfully pulled off over his career.

Of course, that spree had to come to an end at some point, explaining why he was even in the jail to tell Face all this shit.

Face did have a brief thought: What if he were to break Jim out, and maybe some others? New identities and what-have-you, and it's all sorted. Then again, if someone found out it was he who freed them, then he'd be screwed. If he was being honest, the prison was just going by regulations when they put him in that nice cell. If he was found to be doing something illegal, they'd just put him in with the other inmates, and he'd have an actual prison sentence. Plus, Glynda was expecting him at that 'staff training session' or whatever she had called it, and he wasn't really intending to piss off Glynda for any reason.

He sighed, and decided that it wasn't in his best interests to free anyone from prison, just as the cables to the locking mechanism gave another jolt. This time, however, the small faceplate on the card reader lit up a smaller green light, and the door itself clicked into an unlocked state. Face pumped a fist slightly in success, and slipped into the evidence locker, making sure to put something in the way of the door so it wouldn't close again. The locker itself was fairly dark, Face's sunglasses-obscured vision being able to easily make out the shapes of boxes and other objects on shelves, a desk to his right where evidence was signed in, plus the silhouette of another door in the back corner of the room. Face listened carefully for a few moments, just to make sure there were no guards coming, and finally started to crouch walk over to the desk. If be could find anything related to his case, then his job of finding his equipment would be a bit easier to accomplish.

Face gathered a small amount of momentum, and silently vaulted his way over the desk, coming to a crouch on the other side. His boots made the faintest _tink_ of impact as he landed, which prompted him to stay still for a moment to check for incoming footsteps. When none arose, he waited a moment in the darkness, then peeked over the desk.

Nobody there.

"Perfect..." Face whispered to himself as he began to rifle through the drawers. The prison wouldn't just store evidence randomly, there must have been something; a list, document, whatever, that might tell him where they put his backpack. He checked every drawer, every cabinet, and every small compartment for anything of the sort, but no luck. As he was about to check another, previously unseen drawer, he checked the pin board behind him.

He frowned and sighed: Right in the middle of it was a list of evidence cabinets and what they contained. Rubbing his face with his hand, he slouched for a few moments and snatched the paper from the wall, trudging out to the rows of shelves. He cast a glance down at the paper. "Vale Dockyard..." His eyes drifted over the page as he carefully paced down the rows of shelving units. Finally, he spotted the words in both the dull light and his dull vision (sunglasses, and a mask, at one in the morning). "Locker seven, row eight. Times one 'Brown Duffel Sack Containing Various Items Of Apparel And Firearms'." He was about to head over there, until he read the small note beneath.

_Illegal weapons recovered by officers are to be taken to the armoury. No exceptions._

"Ack, fuckin' hell..." Face grumbled. "Where the hell is the armoury? I'd probably need another fucking keycard for that place..."

_Click._

"Down on the ground, sir," a voice commanded from behind him. Face was about to turn and see his opponent, when he had what was blatantly a pistol barrel pushed into his back. "Don't move! Down on your knees!"

"Fuck off," Face shot back. The officer behind him began to inhale in preparation for a new order or threat, and that brief respite was all Face needed.

He span, delivering a swift elbow to the guard's face and staggering him. As he was dropping slightly, Face swept up around him and wrapped his inner arm around the guard's neck, locking it in place with his free arm. His suited opponent began to thrash his legs wildly, and his arms flailed for the apparently suppressed pistol he had been carrying, but found no purchase. Eventually, the strangled coughs and wheezes slowed, and Face was able to drag the unconscious man behind the desk.

He stood back to admire the pure dastardly hiding of the body.

Then he realised his foot was sticking up over the top of the desk.

"For fuck's sake."

_**Several contortion attempts later...**_

After collecting his backpack (not duffel bag), Face felt proud that he had managed to successfully store someone in a small metal locker for the first time. Now he understood why it was a popular thing to do in US high schools. What he didn't understand, however, was how he was going to get to the armoury, and that annoyed him to no end. He'd looted the guard as well, thankfully bestowing him with a keycard, telescopic baton, a pair of handcuffs (with no key), two suppressed pistol magazines, and the suppressed pistol itself.

Also, some nice shoes and a suit, which Face promptly dropped into his backpack. He spent a moment admiring how they seemed to just fall into the nearly infinite hammerspace abyss that stored his hats.

Finally, backpack on his back, he dropped to a low crouch with the silenced pistol in hand, keeping an eye down the corridor, and began to advance towards a staircase. If he was unmistaken, the usual positioning of an armoury would mean that it would be fairly deep underground, as an insurance that both CCTV would catch someone sneaking around and that if anything exploded or went wrong, damage would be minimized. Of course, as Face understood from Engineer's spontaneous rants about building structures, an underground detonation with a few barrels of gunpowder or other volatile substance would rip through the lower support rods of a building and effectively destroy it in one go: Guy "DeGroot" Fawkes proved this, when he blew up Parliament and was later discovered to have been paid fifty pence and a sausage roll.

Thus, Face needed to go deeper.

_**Copious body hidings and bullets later...**_

The keycard entering the reader made the most satisfying noise imaginable for Face. Almost got spotted several times; Guards almost saw the cameras being shot out; Guards almost found their unconscious coworkers; And one guard almost slipped on one of Face's spent casings. He did feel quite bad for having to knock out guards and put them in conveniently placed bins. The guards of the prison were actually alright blokes: It was only their profession that forced them to make decisions that inmates strongly disliked.

He was almost tempted to alert the other guards to his presence.

However, steering him away from that temptation was an array of firearms that made him drool. Legal and not-so-legal, the walls were lined with racks of various weapons, ranging from federal-issue sidearms, shotguns, and rifles, to military equipment, and repossessed illegal weapons. However, as he looked over them, his weapons caught his eye near-instantly. Due to their bleak appearance, the appearance of other guns helped his weapons to stand out from the racks. His shotgun was inbetween what appeared to be a bunch of Mossbergs; his rocket launcher(s) were locked in a metal cage beneath the racks; his Huntsman bow and Fortified Compound were left on the table; all of his knives were in a bucket; and his other sniper rifles were mounted on a rack with several other long range weapons.

Eagerly, Face placed his backpack onto the table in the center of the room, and began grabbing all the weapons he could. When it came to the launchers, he looked away, and delivered a pair of silenced pistol shots to the padlock, and slid the door open, taking the launchers and storing them in his near-infinite hammerspace bag. Though, he did also make sure to grab a few other weapons.

He'd never seen a suppressor on a shotgun before, nor had he ever seen a rifle with a magazine. All he had was a machine pistol.

It did take a few minutes, he admitted, and it took quite a while to figure out how he was gonna escape. Was he going to break Jim out? He had his Hitman's Heatmaker. That was silenced, he could probably shoot out the lock from a distance and nobody would hear. Plus, if he was caught, he could be mistaken for any White Fang guy because of the mask he was wearing, giving him the opportunity to leg it. Could also be passed off as another White Fang raid: Those did happen whilst Face was in jail. Normally nothing good came out of it, and Face just had to put up with another extremist cunt yelling at him and telling him that because he's a human, he sucks, but...yeah, they happened a lot.

Sighing, Face reached into his pocket, and retrieved a coin.

Break out Jim would be heads, leave him for some other time would be tails.

Making sure he was standing on a non-echoing surface, he placed the coin on the top of his fist and flicked it with his thumb, a metal _ping_ ringing out as the small circle flipped into the air. Not looking, Face snatched it as it came down, threw it up again, and caught it. He finally placed it face-down on the back of his hand.

Somehow, it was balanced on its edge.

"What the actual fuck?" he groaned, putting the coin away. "Sod it, I'll come back for Jim some other tone." Ensuring he had everything, Face dropped to a crouch and began to make his way out of the building.

He cast a glance to his watch.

5:00 AM? Holy shit, Glynda was gonna kill him if he wasn't back by 10:00 AM. The airship ride normally took three hours, the buses weren't running to the station at that time...

Mentally steeling himself, Face decided that the best exit was the main entrance of the prison, and began to run down the halls to the main cell block. From there, he could get down via the catwalks, and...maybe break out Jim. He did have a silenced shotgun now. Pausing, he unslung his backpack, and retrieved his new toy. Making sure it was loaded, he slipped his backpack back on and checked the wall signs in the dim light.

_**Control Room, Cell Blocks A-F**_

Perfect. He hadn't been meaning to kill anyone tonight, but since he was disguised, Face was more than happy to make exceptions if the need arose.


	9. Oxworth Breakdance

Face honestly could not have expected anything else to happen.

Within five seconds of entering the room, he'd knocked one of the security guards onto the ground with the butt of his shotgun.

Within seven seconds, he'd spun around and shot another guard that was reaching for the alarm.

After nine seconds, another guard he hadn't detected withdrew his pistol.

After ten seconds, Face slammed him in the chest with a shotgun shell.

After ten and a half seconds, the guard stumbled and fired off a shot from his non-suppressed handgun: The baton Face assumed was strapped to his belt actually turned out to have been the detached suppressor.

So, ten and a half seconds into stealth-breaking out Jim, and now the alarm was going to be raised because one guard had a muscle spasm after being shot.

God, Face hated it when that happened.

The guard he had knocked down onto the floor was getting himself up already, and the one who's just been shot was leaning against the wall, limply clutching his pistol whilst he radioed in. Growling, Face turned, flipped his shotgun over to hold it like a bat, and kicked the recovering guard back down onto his back. He grunted in pain, and a noticeable red patch began to spread across his ribs. He then flipped the shotgun again, and repeated the action of shooting the guard with the radio. This time, following on from the loud zap sound from his suppressed shotgun, the pellets hit the man in the head, and sprayed gore all over the wall as he slumped to the ground, trailing red behind his skull.

Face recognised him.

That was Jones.

Nobody liked Jones.

Face looked down at his feet again, to the guard that was still there. He was rolling himself over, crying and whining quietly to himself.

Face didn't know this bloke.

Meh.

He crouched slightly, and delivered a shotgun butt to the back of the man's head, knocking the suited guard out instantly. He stood up rapidly, and peeked out of the window, the sound of the man who'd been shot in the arm groaning loudly. Much to his disappointment, there was a squad of guards running across lower level catwalks towards the stairs that led up to the control room. Leaning in further to look at where they were, Face had began to reload shells into his gun when a loud burst of gunfire ripped against the glass of the control room and forced him to get down. Already, lights were flicking on around the cell block, and an alarm was already starting up. Inmates were already against the bars of their cells, looking around as walls of orange against rods of black in an attempt to figure out what was going on.

OK, stealth was already out the window.

Face got up again, and slipped his silenced shotgun into his backpack as he began to look over the vast array of buttons on the control panel. If he could open all the cells, he had perfect cover in the form of inmates.

_Lots_ of inmates.

Plus, if people went by his mask, then he was a member of the White Fang that freed everyone. He might even fix a few societal problems whilst he escaped.

That idea fresh in his mind, Face began to flick all the switches. He didn't even read the labels. Flickity flick flick. All the flick. Lights glared on and died just as suddenly, cell doors flew open, catwalks rotated, alarms changed, the PA turned on briefly, all kinds of crazy things happened.

And finally, all the cell doors slammed open, and roaring crowds of criminals tore out of them to give the guards a piece of their mind. The suited men were washed away by flurries of orange, giving Face the perfect opportunity to leg it. He stepped back, ran forward, and leapt up, drop-kicking the window to the control room and smashing the glass. He flew straight through, the glass' previous weakening by gunfire definitely contributing as he plummeted to the ground and landed with a loud crack of bone and unexplainable spatter of blood. Frankly, Face didn't care where it came from: He just needed to get the fuck out of there. Before long, the inmates' eyes would turn to him, and it wouldn't take much longer before someone caught on to who he was.

So without even missing a beat, Face withdrew the shotgun again and clicked in three more shells as he began to dodge and weave between crowds of inmates surrounding and smashing the guards. He moved like some type of ferret that was wearing a hat and carrying a gun, slipping through small gaps and delivering the butt of the shotgun to those who attempted to stop him. The roaring crowds of incredibly pissed off inmates easily outnumbered the security forces by a good seventeen to one, and that didn't even count that some of the inmates could probably punch a tank into pieces, so there was no chance that any of the guards'd be around to tell anyone what they saw and create further enquiries. It did bother Face. The guards were alright blokes. Especially Jerry. He didn't really want to consider that he had brought about the deaths of those who had done him no wrong, but then again, he was a Sniper: The people he used to kill on a daily basis didn't even get a _chance_ to do him wrong before their eyes were relocated to the walls behind them.

But even then again, they were _intending_ to kill him, so it would be self defence. The guards would only intend to harm him if he had been instigating a riot or attacking another inmate, and even then, the most they'd do is knock him out or break his arm or something of the like.

Face decided to stop thinking about it.

A few seconds before he reached the main exit door, there was an almighty bang as the door's handles were blown straight open, and the doors themselves were booted wide, revealing a whole squad of the robots Face had encountered earlier. Each of the robots was armed with some form of assault weapon, and each looked more deadly than the next. Of course, were they humans, Face might have tried reasoning with them, but since they were military-grade combat androids, then there was absolutely no chance that anything could stay their trigger fingers. Instead, the only thing that was going to happen was that in the three seconds following the door breach, all hell was going to break loose.

Raising his gun, Face delivered a single shell to the head of the lead robot, with a marginally worthwhile effect: Sparks flew from the impact point, and the machine staggered slightly, raising a hand to assess the damage. Good. They could probably be killed. He hoped. Ripping the pump back and slamming it forward, he fired again at the same robot's head, using the recoil as a small momentum boost so he could backpedal. As the robot's head burst open in a shower of sparks and circuitry, Face turned to the rioting inmates, running straight into the midst of the sea of orange jumpsuits just as the sound of gunfire rang out behind him. Inmates roared in panic, starting to run as a crowd towards nearby exits and cells for cover from the bullets being spat by the robots' weapons. Face had barely made it to a room that he knew had a service ladder into the sewers when a sharp pain shot through his left calf. Grunting and stumbling, he looked down as he slammed into the door, smashing it open, and got a good view of the ragged hole that his leg now sported.

"Fuck!" he yelled, before circling around the door and leaning against it. A few bullets pinged against the door, and Face had assumed they were meant for him, when a sudden force pried the metal door open slightly and in slipped an inmate. Face was honestly surprised to see that it was exactly who he'd been looking for. "Jim?"

"Yeah, that's me," replied the man, before grunting and leaning against the door. "Give us a hand, you lazy git!" Face now understood that he was trying to shut it, and quickly moved to help. Once it had both Face's and Jim's weight on it, it closed much faster, finally clanking itself into a locked state and leaving the two in the small maintenance room. Outside, the sound of gunfire rang out sporadically throughout the jail, and every so often, a mechanical voice ordered the inmates to disperse. Otherwise, Face now had a moment to breathe, which also gave him the time to look for the ladder he knew was in the room. However, the poor lighting, coupled with Face's strange habit of wearing sunglasses all the time and his silly White Fang mask, made it rather difficult to spot the ladder in question. Squinting, Face made his way into the room as Jim leaned against the door, breathing heavily and rubbing his forehead free of sweat. "Never thought I'd be sayin' this to a White Fang goon," he gasped, "But cheers for that."

"Glad to know you recognise me, Jim," Face whistled, delving into a pile of supply boxes and pushing them apart. Jim raised a brow behind him and stood up.

"Should I be knowin' you from somewhere?" he asked cautiously, narrowing his eyes. Face didn't reply, instead choosing to put his energy into moving a heavier box out of the way. Jim obviously didn't have the patience. "Hey! I'm talkin' to you! You fuckin' Extremist twat!" Face groaned, and turned to Jim finally, ripping off the mask.

"Hey, a fucking 'thank you' would be bloody nice," he shot back. Jim leaned back in surprise.

"Face?" he chuckled, finally smiling and folding his arms. "I thought you'd got out."

"As I have," he replied flatly, finally shifting the box and lifting the manhole lid into the service tunnels below. "And now I'm getting you out." It was fairly dark below: Face decided that it'd be best to try out one of those fancy police shotguns he'd nicked. Taking his backpack off and storing the silenced shotgun inside (loaded, of course, because it probably wouldn't go off in his bag, he hoped), he reached in a bit further and his hands caught purchase on the pistol grip of one of the guns, allowing him to withdraw it. It was fairly sleek, but didn't seem too different from the shotguns he saw Mann Co. Lawyers using: Black, pistol grip, made of mostly metal but with bits of plastic, weird shaped pump, but it had a torch and a laser on it. He was also certain that the one he had stolen _wasn't_ made by Mann Co., meaning its chances of a blowing up and punching him in the face decreased by over seven hundred percent. Jim frowned.

"I know I owe you one, but how about I get a soddin' gun?" Face paused.

"You'll also need to get changed. You're dressed as a fucking convict, and you'll look shifty as hell."

"Well, what am I gonna wear?" Face paused. Then, he smiled, as he remembered what he'd taken earlier in the night. Opening his backpack again, he took a brief rummage around until he found it. Then, he withdrew, to Jim's surprise, the neatly folded suit of the guard from the evidence locker, complete with a suit bag and coat hanger. Jim stared at this.

"That bag's fuckin' magic."


	10. Back in the Day

Glynda noticed that something seemed off about Professor Face. Not that she was going to interrogate him over it, of course: He actually did follow through with his promise to come back, so she didn't exactly see that he'd done anything wrong. Though...she did wonder where he had gotten his armaments from. She was almost certain that the police had kept his 'backpack'. Had it been stolen?

If so, she'd heard nothing about it. The police would have come to Beacon for answers first, as they _were_ playing host to the miserable murderer himself.

Oh well. She'd chase it up later.

Nevertheless, she decided that she would eat her breakfast with Professor Face, who was sat at the end of the staff table in the food hall with a few slices of toast. She set her tray down opposite him, and sat on the wooden bench. There was a pause, as she silently watched her subordinate chewing on an unbuttered and considerably burned piece of bread like an animal would. Finally, she cleared her throat to speak.

"Morning."

What?

He...greeted her first. She was momentarily taken aback. "Oh. Um...good morning, Professor Face. I trust you slept well?"

"I don't sleep much," he replied casually. He hadn't even looked up from his breakfast, and he had his usual, neutral expression on his face. His teeth were black. Just the thought of eating burned toast set Glynda's stomach on edge. "Most of my bloodstream is caffeine, so I can't sleep for more than a few hours unless I'm really overdone." She nodded in understanding.

Perhaps she could learn something about him during this conversation?

"Of course..." she murmured, sipping her tea "You were a 'Sniper', correct?" Face paused, flicked his eyes up to her, and nodded, leaning back slightly. "So I would assume that required a lot of staying awake and in the same place."

"I kept a note of how long I spent in my perches," he said, resting his left elbow on the table as he looked at Glynda. "Over fifteen years, which is about a hundred and thirty-one thousand four hundred hours, give or take, I spent around seventy-eight thousand, five hundred and sixty two hours in different perches. Longest I spent at one time was..." He hesitated, thinking for a moment. "Two hundred and fifty five hours, in a shed, watching over the area where some Saudi dictator was due to be observing a mass execution of petty thieves and 'enemies of the state'."

"Enemies of the State?"

"Farmers who simply couldn't afford taxes, people trying to move from the country, people who watched TV, and anyone that Mann Co. said was 'a pretty cool guy'."

"And you were sent to look after him." Face nodded grimly, looking down to cut into some bacon. Glynda frowned. "He doesn't sound like a pleasant man."

"He _wasn't_," Face corrected, looking Goodwytch directly in the eyes. "As far as my targets go, he's the one who sticks out to me the most as having deserved the arrow through the head." Before Glynda could respond, she hesitated.

"Wait...an _arrow_?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. Face nodded calmly, swallowing some coffee.

"Yeah." He noticed that a few students were looking his way and listening in on another table behind Glynda. "Specific request by the client to utterly humiliate the guy when I killed him. I had three options." He raised a finger. "One, I could throw Jarate on him and then beat him to death." He raised his other finger. "Two, I could knock out the special forces marksman they sent after me, and use his rifle to kill the dictator." He raised his ring finger. "Or three, kill him with a weapon so antiquated that nobody would possibly expect him to be killed with it."

"And you chose the last option..." mused the woman opposite. She shrugged semi-approvingly. She wasn't too pleased about the fact he seemed proud of it, but part of her did agree that he deserved it. "Debatably an immoral act, but I suppose your world is simply different from ours." Carefully, she put some of her expensive Atlesian pastry from her plate into her mouth, gently beginning to chew in her usual, lady-like manner, still trying to think up a way of asking what he was doing last night. Face watched her, with a frown on his face.

Finally, he inhaled to speak. "Y'see, Miss Goodwytch, there's a reason that I came back here when you let me head into town last night." Glynda paused, swallowing her food and looking her colleague dead in the eyes. "I'm _sure_ you expected me to, ah, how to put this...'disappear and cause problems', would I be right in guessing that that's something on your mind right now?" Hesitantly, and with a serious expression on her face, she nodded.

"That's right," she responded coldly. "I have been wondering that. Why do you stay here?"

"You really wanna know?" he asked. "You certain?" She nodded firmly in response.

"I do." Face leaned forward onto his elbows and grinned.

"Then the reason I stay here is you, Glynda."

Goodwytch nearly slapped him as a table behind her went completely and utterly silent.

"Y'see, I've always ended up in this predicament," he continued, reclining slightly. "Every single one of my employers thus far has been someone in a position of power, and they've always been well within their capabilities to kill me on the spot. In some cases, they have. In others, they've caused me permanent damage." Momentarily, Face leaned forward, and lifted his sunglasses slightly. "You see how my right eye's a little bit darker than the other?" he asked. Still fairly shocked, Goodwytch leaned forward, and nodded. His right eye was a light shade of greyish-red, unlike his left, which was a normal white.

"I'd assume that's some eye injury," she finally responded. Bugger, that table behind was going to start spreading rumours amongst students that she and Professor Face...

Oh God, she felt slightly sick.

"You'd be right in guessing that," he nodded, raising his glasses again. "My right eye doesn't work at all." Glynda blinked, and stared at him in disbelief.

"Your right eye doesn't even **work?!**" she said slightly louder than expected. A couple more tables turned to look at her before she realized her mistake, clearing her throat and sitting straight again.

For God's sakes, first there would be relationship rumours, and now the fact that she'd been beaten in a fight by a marksman whose dominant eye was broken.

"Mmhmm," Face nodded, sipping his drink and adjusting his hat brow slightly. "Pissed off a Mob Boss once when I refused to kill his wife for...reasons." His co-worker smirked.

"Personal reasons?" she asked mockingly.

"No, because I hadn't tortured her bank details out of her at the time." Face shot her a flat 'duh' glare as the witch shook her head. "For Christ's sakes, Glynda, keep up with me here. Anyway, you know how the Soviet mob deals with people that piss them off?" He raised his hands, miming holding a hammer in preparation to slam a nail into his eye. Glynda paled at the thought. "Wasn't the actual attack itself that killed me; It was the part where I killed a load of the Mob Boss' guys with a carpentry hammer, but ended up needing to shoot myself to end the ridiculous eye pain."

He hesitated. "Tangent. Anyway, the point is, a good number of my employers have done that kind of shit to me. Never them personally, but it was always their female assistant that looked a bit like a secretary. Always them. So, there's a pretty solid reason that I'm gonna keep returning to this college: You." Once again, Glynda frowned.

"Stop saying that I'm the reason you return to Beacon, it sounds perverted," she snapped. "And why would I do that? If word went out that I'd...I don't know, whipped a man to death, then my career would be over." Face shrugged.

"Ah, whatever. You'd track me down and seriously harm me, correct?"

"A simple way of putting it, yes."

"Then I'm gonna keep coming back here." He sipped his coffee again. "Besides, still have a few more lessons to teach here before I go back to prison."

"And the staff training day," Glynda added, prompting Face to nod.

"Ah, 'course, can't forget that one," he replied. "What even happens there?"

"Staff are pitted against dangerous Grimm, to ensure skills against them remain sharp and find out which weapons are effective against their annual mutations."

Now it was Face's turn to frown. "Annual mutations?" he asked. Goodwytch nodded.

"Yes...you didn't find out anything on it?" Face shook his head.

"Nothing in the few dozen books about Grimm I read through," he replied, shrugging as he drew his knife to fiddle with. "Just general 'stab it here' tactics and 'try not to die' advice. I'll assume annual mutations aren't a good thing?" Glynda tilted her head from side to side.

"That really depends on the year. Some years, a species will develop a mass heat immunity, then the next year, they lose it, and become resistant to blunt force trauma whilst increasing in sensitivity to sharp edges and bullets. It keeps us on our toes." Face nodded in understanding, caressing the edge of his machete. It took a moment, but he finally spoke again.

"There was a guy back where I'm from." Glynda looked at him again. "He was a pretty smart bloke. Built machines. Also a bit of a philosopher. One of the most memorable things I heard him say was how he dealt with enemies he found tough to beat."

"And that is?"

Face suddenly flicked his revolver out and span it round his finger, before aiming it dead ahead of him. She noticed that he closed his left eye. If his right eye didn't work, how the hell was he aiming?

"Simple: You use a gun. And if that doesn't work?"

He slipped his machete away, before unclipping the SMG from his belt and holding that up as well.

"Use _more_ bloody guns."

Glynda smiled. Hardly deniable logic.

"I trust you go by that logic, Professor?" she asked, sipping her coffee. Face nodded.

"A machine gun, revolver, and rifle says 'yes'. Think of it as-"

"-an escalation of violence?" Face paused, and looked at her in confusion.

"...uh...yeah, how'd you guess I was gonna say that?" Glynda offered no response, except staring at his eyes as she continued drinking her coffee.

"Just a hunch."

Face frowned, and slowly nodded, returning to drinking his coffee.

"...right."

The rest of breakfast was eaten in silence. Glynda was fairly certain she heard students discussing which 'positions' she and Professor Face used.

Thus, as professionally as she could, she finished her meal, exited the dining hall, then visited the ladies' room to remove her meal from her stomach.

_**Later, during Face's lesson...**_

The few students who had pistols lined up at the front of the class, their weapons in hand and aimed forwards. Each looked more confused than the other as to why their teacher had called them up, and why said teacher was leaning on the wall close to them and sharpening his knife. The rest of the class simply watched, equally as non-understanding as those in front of them.

This had been going on for what felt like a few minutes before someone spoke. Loudly, Weiss groaned, folding her arms and leaning back. "Professor, why are you wasting our time like this?" she asked frustratedly, glaring at her teacher who was still running a grindstone up and down his knife. Knowing what was coming next irritated Face, so he rolled his eyes and sighed as Weiss continued. "I came to this academy to learn how best to combat the despicable creatures that plague our continents, and how-!"

"Yeah, we get it, you have servants who wipe your arse, stop going on about it," Face said loudly, cutting her off and standing up straight as he slipped his machete away. The rest of the class stifled laughs as Weiss let out a growling noise and pouted angrily. "What I'm teaching here is how to hold a stance. You've been aiming your guns ahead for the past half an hour. And as you can all see, you might notice how they're starting to struggle."

He did have a point; The students with the smaller weapons were doing so with shaking arms, and beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads. Most of them were gritting their teeth to deal with the pain of holding their arm up for such a long time. Face began to pace in front of them. "Now, I'm certain you're wondering why I'm making you hold a stance. Ain't that right, Shiner?"

Blake grit her teeth harder and huffed from her nostrils.

"The reason being is that setting up to drop your target is all part of getting something to eat. Because, you wanna know something?" He looked over the room. "If it ain't dead, you ain't eating it." Jaune nodded in understanding, and wrote this down. Face grinned, snapped his fingers, and pointed to him. "Good lad! Timebomb's got the right idea! Those of you not keeping your trembling arms up, note this all down. Could save you from going hungry later." He continued to pace, before hesitating and pointing to the row of students next to him. "Oh, and some of you do the favour of writing it into these guys' books, their arms'll be sore for a week after the next hour of doing this."

There were loud, unanimous groans of disapproval from the small arms students, prompting Face to throw his head back and laugh. "Ah, I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Lower your guns, lads, you did good with your steadiness." Withojt needing to be asked twice, those who had been standing with pistols raised let their shooting arms go limp and dangle slightly, with all of them letting out a gasp and rolling their shoulders to alleviate the pain as the shuffled back to their seats. "Little bit of work, and you'd be good for a day of that! Those who did notably well were Mr. Bronzewing, Mr. Ren, and Miss Belladonna, who managed to keep their aims incredibly steady throughout that whole half hour. Nice work to all of you, though." There were grunts of 'yeah, thanks' as the students shifted back into their seats.

"Now then: How are all of you on close quarters with ranged weapons? Give's a thumbs up if you think you're kind of alright at it." A few (_noticeably left_) hands shot up, with thumbs sideways, angling towards fully upright. A girl near the back had her hand all the way up, with a smug grin on her face. Face rolled his eyes as he leaned back onto the desk. "Miss Adel, I think I gathered that you'd be good at close range fighting. You have a minigun." She offered a grin.

"And let me guess," she replied, leaning forward from her top row seat at the back of the class. "You've had experience dealing with miniguns at close range?" Weiss turned around, frowning.

"No, he hasn't!" she snapped. "I think all of his stories are just lies!" Face sighed and rubbed his forehead as she turned to face him. "I mean, come on! Who here _really_ believes Professor Face has **died several times**? Seriously? You can't just come back to life!"

"I did," whistled the man in question. "Happened a lot. RESPAWN system let me return. Your point being?" Weiss shot him a _'really?'_ look, then reclined, smirking.

_'Great. Here comes more smartarse remarks.'_

"Then if you did die a lot, that surely means you're not very good at your job?" There was a murmur amongst the class. The rest of Team RWBY was smiling slightly at their 'getting one over' the guy who just wouldn't answer them. "Seems to me like you had to get a teaching job because fighting was too rough for you, hmm? You just couldn't handle the fact that people would hurt each other all the time, and they might have given you a boo-boo?" The class was laughing slightly now. Yang, as usual when these events happened, was already recording. Face smiled at the comments.

"Miss Schnee," he began, standing up and beginning to pace. "As a mercenary for fifteen years, I can tell you one thing for certain: If a prissy little rich girl, much like you, had entered _my_ battlefield, you would have been gunned down with no remorse. You'd have been shot, burned, stabbed, punched, bashed, and beaten half to death by the time you'd even reached the objective. And you really wanna know what the BLUs that attacked you would do with your bleeding, broken little body?" The class fell silent, and Weiss stared at her teacher in disbelief.

"...you're...you're absolutely _vile_...you sickening, scum-ridden, pathetic attempt at human life. You're saying that they would abuse me?!" Face nodded calmly, hands in his pockets.

"The BLUs'd probably beat you up whilst doing it. Had some real sick bastards on the enemy side. And that made my job great: I once saw some BLUs in a bar. They were harassing a younger woman; I think she was the barmaid. Me being off-duty, I was having a smoke in one of the stalls when I saw the biggest of all those arseholes punch her in the face, push her against the wall, then start wailing on her for no reason. If I had to guess, she didn't serve them their drinks." Face hesitated, remembering the event. "I just went over, so I could solve the situation and get the girl out of there before they killed her." He glanced down at Weiss, looking her dead in the eyes. "The bodies I buried that day are still under the foundations of their recently constructed car park."

Weiss didn't stop glaring. "And you think any of us will believe that?" Face raised a brow, folding his arms.

"I don't expect you to," he retorted. "Evidently, this world makes more sense to you than it does to me, and vice versa. You think this world's bad because of Grimm. I think this world's bad because people get on so bloody well. Where I'm from, if you tried starting a college of this size, I guarantee that it'd have been firebombed to hell before it even opened, just out of spite for the fact it's a big place that doesn't have corporate value. And if you visited my world, you'd probably not like how tame the animals are compared to the humans. Every other _day_, someone gets shot to death, or stabbed, or dies trying to rocket jump across the map. Meanwhile, most Mann Co. meetings involve the CEO punching a cage of tigers to death whilst listening to the company's profit margins for the year." There was silence. "So, if you think you know how long someone from my world would last in a fight, then I suggest you think again."

Weiss and Face locked eyes, glaring at each other for at least a minute before Weiss broke off, and went back to writing. "Good lass," Face said finally. "Now, to answer your question, Miss Adel, yes, I have faced miniguns before."

"Which caliber?" asked the beret wearing student.

"Hmm..." Face thought for a moment, rubbing his chin. "Our Heavy never specified the exact caliber. He just said how bloody expensive it was. Two hundred dollar custom-tooled cartridges, and his gun fired at ten-thousand rounds per minute. Coco let her eyes briefly go wide.

"Woah. That sounds like a big gun."

"Big gun for a big bloke. He was like a massive shaved bear, that hated people. Could crush your head with one hand. Plus, he lugged the thing around all day: All one hundred and fifty kilos of minigun, plus a shotgun."

"So if he was on your team, why did you fight him?" Yang asked. She'd put her phone away by then. No developments happened, so no RemTube money for her. Face closed his eyes for a minute.

"Y'know I said that my world would be considered really weird over here?" he asked. "Well, my team and the other team consisted of clones of the same bloke."

Near the left, someone laughed.

"Thought you might laugh. It's true though. We had a 'class' warfare. I was the Sniper. Team marksman, if you will. It was my job to kill anyone of importance before they caused problems." He gestured to Team JNPR. "Think of it like your set up; Miss Nikos, you'd be considered a mix of the team's marksman, and a soldier. You seem to take a few hits to stop...if you ever _do_ stop." The redhead smirked at the comment. "Mr. Ren, you'd be counted as your Team's Scout and close-range quick-fighter. You move fast, and if you get close enough, you _really_ fuck them up. I watched that video of you with that snake, by the way. Damn brutal. Keep at it." The quiet boy nodded cautiously. "Timebomb: You'd be the defensive offensive, kind of like the guy I mentioned. You can take strong attacks with your shield, then hit back with your sword." Jaune nodded. "And Nora."

"Hi, Professor!" beamed the girl.

"You're the explosion guy. You blow things up. Your job is to blast Grimm into lots of small bits. And then, you have your hammer to deal damage up close." Face looked back at the class. "See what I mean? In their team, _everyone_ has a role to play." Silence. "Need another example?" There was a murmur of 'yeah, sure'. Face leaned back slightly to assess the students, and then finally decided to point at Team RWBY. "How about Team RWBY, here? Let's see..."

Blake leaned over to Yang. "I think he's gonna just insult us."

"Miss Xiao Long! Your entire fighting style revolves around getting up close enough to dish out _huge_ damage. And I mean _**HUGE**_. I watched some of the footage where you fought a group of three Ursas: You punched one through a bunch of fucking trees. But you wouldn't be able to do that without Miss Rose keeping you covered with her rifle. She's the shooter; She's the fast moving Scout with the high-powered weapon. She keeps them off you, and you smash them apart. You two really are sisters; Both of your fighting styles accommodate each others' fighting styles." Face looked at Blake and Weiss.

"Miss Schnee, you move fast. Really fast."

"So?" snapped the heiress, looking up at him frustratedly.

"So? _So_ moving fast allows you to get amongst the enemy before they can register you moved. And what about your other runes? One of them supposedly allows you to pin objects in place. If you pinned an opponent in the right spot, they'd be forced to be subjected to your stabs, or your whole team's strikes. You're the one who locks down an area, and _doesn't_ give it back." Face narrowed his eyes at her, then pointed at her. "You're a tactical Engineer." She tried to think up an argument, but then realised that was actually a compliment. Finally, Face looked at Blake.

"And you, Miss Belladonna." She narrowed her eyes at him, eyelid twitching slightly. "That night at the docks, I barely even saw you before you dropped down behind Torchwick. You were like a shadow. And when you shot back at me, you damned nearly took my head off with a pistol from about a hundred and fifty meters. That takes skill. Those guys around you just went down like flies. You're a CQC master; A pistol marksman; An infiltrator. You're like a Spy." Face paused, then smiled as he gestured to her again. "There we go. That's your new name. _Spy_." Blake blinked in confusion.

"What?" she said finally as Face turned and moved back to the desk. The Sniper just shrugged.

"Well, you ain't got a black eye anymore, have you?" he replied nonchalantly. "No point calling you by a feature you don't even have. It's like me calling Mr. Yatsuhashi 'Tiny', or Mr. Winchester 'Dick'." The class laughed. Cardin sat up in confusion, lowering his Scroll. "So, Miss Belladonna, you're now called 'Spy'. Stay classy." The Faunus was about to protest the name, but then realized something.

There was no ill intent behind it. No hidden insult. He'd complimented her fighting style, then given her a name based on it.

"Spy..." she muttered to herself as Professor Face turned back to the board, beginning to write out '_How to Punch Through a Grimm's Face_' on the board in a mix of capital and lower case letters.

And for the first time, she smiled at something her former attacker had said.


	11. Women are like Explosives

That evening, Face sat alone in his room, as per his usual, fiddling with the variety of guns he had 'borrowed' from the police armoury. Of course, he had no intention of giving them back. That was why he didn't particularly feel troubled as he pulled apart a shotgun and began putting the more tactical parts onto one of the many Mann Co. Perch Defender 12 Gauge shotguns he had collected over the years. The one he was in the process of fitting a rather snazzy black tactical folding stock onto was his favourite.

It was called 'Gavin'. He had no particular reasoning behind the name. He just liked the name 'Gavin', for its sheer mediocrity. Like, if you were killed by a gun, you'd expect it to have some cool name, like 'Vengeance' or 'Venom'. But with Face? Nope, you got killed by 'Simon'. How boring is that? It's almost humiliating. Perhaps you'd even have an existential crisis upon respawning. The name was a weapon in itself.

Since he'd bought a Name Tag, filled it in, and sent it back to Mann Co. to receive the custom engraved plates with the name on, that small metal plate was bolted onto the side of the weapon as a way of discerning it from all the others that normally littered battlefields. And, as usual, it was just another gun that he had picked up; His backpack contained dozens of them.

He was fairly certain he could fuel another genocidal campaign through Africa with the all firepower he had. However, considering he was just the one person, he would likely get stabbed to death in the first town, then eaten or whatever it was that the more violent African tribes would do.

Regardless, Simon was his favourite. Thus, Simon received preferential treatment in all the tacticool parts being put onto it.

It was at that moment, not unlike the other night, where Face's Scroll buzzed. Continuing to zero the holographic sight of the shotgun, he leaned back on his bed, gripping the gun between his knees and resting it on his shoulder, using his right hand to adjust the sighting and his left to grab the phone. Upon twisting the sight adjustment a few degrees, he paused, and looked at the message he had been sent.

He frowned as he read the message's sender, and contents.

_**[NO USER ID]**_

_**wag1**_

_**r u face?**_

_**i was told by my boss 2 send u a msg about goin 2 juniors bar**_

_**she said she knows u and ur important or somthin**_

_**hed 2 juniors asap she wants 2 talk 2 u!**_

_**also dont tell no1 this is secret**_

_**c u l8r bby**_

_**xxx**_

"The fuck...?" Face murmured, trying to make sense of the unusual method of communicating. For a moment, he studied the message further, before sighing and placing the shotgun down.

Was this how kids communicated?

Sighing, he checked his watch. Only 8:30PM. There were still airships going out to Vale...but would he get in shit for leaving without informing Glynda?

Who the hell was even messaging him? If, for whatever reason, it was a trap, he had the feeling that the person who set it up was a bit of an amateur. Possibly even worse than that Spy who disguised as a Scout and began desperately trying to jump into Face's perch, failing every time only to have his throat slashed upon finally entering the perch.

The Sniper scratched his head, looking out the window.

Should he?

Shouldn't he?

Adventure, or not being bitched at by Glynda?

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't _mind_ Glynda bitching at him. Recently, he'd noticed she spoke to him less like a criminal, and more like a misbehaving student, for some reason, especially after their fight in the arena. That metaphor even went down to her cornering him and placing an arm over his shoulder and against a wall to intimidate him as she scolded him.

He sniffed.

The more he thought about that, the more he thought he'd watched a porno that started like that, once. Those thoughts aside, he figured he could take Glynda yelling at him.

By that point, as he grabbed his backpack and began to clamber out the window, he was used to running a few risks at Beacon.

_**Two hours later, after a significant amount of walking...**_

Breathing a sigh of relief as he walked through the doors to Junior's club, Face was rather surprised to see the place was practically empty. Not even Junior was in sight, and the only person in the room (_that he knew of_) was him. That made no sense: Why leave the music playing and the lights moving?

He frowned.

Was it a trap?

_Maybe_, he thought as he slowly descended the stairs to the dance floor, keeping an eye out for movement. _If this is a trap, I walked right into it. And by God, I'll fight my way out._ For a moment, he paused at the bottom of the steps, assessing his surroundings.

Empty, except flashing lights and loud music playing. It sounded like something that Scout would put on his 'mixtape': Absolutely shit.

Once he was certain nobody was in sight, he called out. "Hello?" he shouted, eyes narrowed. "Whoever the hell you are, I'm here!" There came no response except his voice echoing.

Something was off.

Narrowing his eyes, Face withdrew his revolver, opened the cylinder, and checked it was loaded. To his surprise, he'd apparently fired off five of the six available rounds. Perhaps he'd loaded duds in, again? No bother.

He kept a cautious eye on his surroundings whilst he individually removed the five non-functional .44 rounds, placed them into his pocket, and began fishing around for replacements. He wasn't feeling too optimistic about the evening: He was likely due for several hours of interrogation the next morning, which to students would likely appear as sexual tension between him and Glynda; He'd made a mistake in preparing his weapon, which meant he could potentially have done that with several others; And Junior's normally incredibly busy club was completely empty.

Why, just the night before, there had to have been a few hundred people present! Where the hell did they all go?

Speaking of missing things...

"Where're my fucking spares...?" muttered Face, patting his belt down. Now things were turning out very strange: He'd only packed _**ONE**_ bullet for his revolver. Normally, his belt was full of spare rounds; At least thirty or forty bullets, just in case something took more than a cylinder to stop. It wasn't like him to just forget bullets and weapons: They were a major part of his _life_, never mind his job.

He paused.

...wait.

Slowly, he removed his hand from his belt, closed the cylinder on the handcannon, and slipped it into its holster. Then, he steadily reached back behind him.

His backpack.

He'd left his backpack in Beacon.

That in mind, it didn't take long for him to realize what that meant: He was in a place that was probably a trap set for him for whatever reason, meeting someone who likely planned to kill him, with only his empty revolver and his fists to protect him were anything to happen.

He grumbled unintelligibly to himself, and continued hunting for the other five shots for his gun whilst he began steadily advancing across the dance floor. "Where's all my bloody ammo gone...?" Face groaned, patting his pockets down as he walked. Eventually, he sighed, and opted to just pull his gun out, make sure the only bullet was ready in the cylinder, before slipping it away at half-cock. Safety was important; In the event that he bumped it on something, it meant two things. One, the hammer being knocked wouldn't set the round off, putting either a hole in his leg or the floor, wasting the only bullet he had. And two, he wouldn't look like a fucking idiot whilst he hobbled around, clutching his leg and trying to find medical aid.

For another minute, he rummaged around, before finally succumbing to the realization he was dumb enough to leave his ammo back at Beacon, and sighed. Scratching his beard, he began to walk further into the club, up the stairs, towards the bar. "Junior?" he called out, peering over to the unoccupied drinks counter. "You there, mate?"

Again, no response.

Something was wrong.

Grunting in disapproval, Face went up to the bar and took a seat on one of the stools. For a moment, he sat still, staring ahead grumpily. Then, he had an idea.

He reached into his pocket, and withdrew his Scroll, bringing up the messages tab. He selected _**[NO USER ID]**_, bringing him a list of options. After a brief hesitation, he tapped the button labelled 'CALL', holding it to his ear.

Right behind him, a phone began to ring, and that was all he needed.

He lowered the phone to hip height, pulling his revolver out and spinning to level it at head height with whoever was behind him, snapping the hammer back with a loud click and gritting his teeth.

Instead of the Spy he had been expecting to see, he saw nothing. Nobody was there, yet the sound of a phone ringing persisted. For a moment, the Sniper breathed heavily, assessing the air in front of him. Then, after a hesitation, he slowly put his Scroll away, ending the call and the ringing sound, before dropping off the stool and checking the space in front of him. At around his chest height and below, there was a section of the air that seemed...fuzzy. As if something was there. It was vaguely similar to how he would see his team's Spy when he was cloaked, but without the reddish or blueish tint to the distortion. The distortion was completely colourless.

Was he hallucinating?

Maybe.

He crouched slightly, before steadily reaching out his left hand to the air. Lights danced through the glass-like substance like liquid.

Upon his hand making contact with the top of the material, Face felt something warm, with a hair-like texture to it. He quickly withdrew his hand, and pointed his gun just below the area he had touched, stepping back. "Who the fuck are you?" he snapped, gritting his teeth. "Was it you who brought me back here?" For a moment, there was no response. Finally, there was a brief chuckle.

"_Wow,_" came the female response, "_Someone doesn't like being set up for blind dates._" Face didn't know how to respond, instead opting to just grunt slightly and tighten his grip on the revolver in his hand. The transparent figure in front of him appeared to do what looked like folding its arms, before shifting its weight. "_Oh, come on. Lighten up. We're just here to talk._"

Again, Face didn't respond vocally for a minute. "Show yourself."

"_Why do I need to? I reserve the right to maintain anonymity in this anonymous meeting._"

"Well, I'm not fucking anonymous, am I?" retorted the taller man. "You obviously know who I am. I deserve to know who the hell you are." The figure groaned, and threw its arms wide.

"_Ugh! Fine!_" 'she' sighed, before the transparency began to fade away. Face didn't relieve his aim, but he did take note of the woman's appearance. Standing in front of him was a young, dark-skinned teenage girl with short green hair. She was wearing unusual clothes, and crossed along her lower back was what appeared to be a pair of Mexican crossdraw holsters containing guns of some kind. Her entire clothing set seemed to revolve around green, and white. Rather solid colour choice, in Face's opinion. Green and white hats and clothes sold for a lot in Mercenary markets. She looked back at him with her arms folded and a pout on her face. "Happy now, Mr. Tough Guy?" The Sniper eyed her up, narrowing his eyes, and prompting the girl to frown. "Stop checking me out!"

"I ain't," retorted Face. "I'm sizing you up."

"You're checking me out."

"Sizing. Up."

"You're totally checking me out." She leaned back slightly, looking over her shoulder at the bar. "Merc, this creepy old guy's checking me out."

To Face's surprise, a grey-haired lad popped up behind the counter, leaning on it as if nothing was wrong. Instinctively, Face stepped back, and pointed the gun at him. "Yep, he's checking you out, alright," whistled the teenager. "Dirty old man." Face grit his teeth.

"Where the hell did you come from?" he snapped. "Who the hell do you two think you are, calling me out here late at night?" The girl laughed, and moved back to the counter, hopping up and sitting on it.

"Yeah, sorry to interrupt your sleep, old timer, but this is important." Whilst she had a look of predatory smugness on her face, her partner looked rather disinterested by the whole meeting. 'Merc' was checking his nails and scratching his face in idleness. "Our boss wants to speak to you."

"Then where the hell is she? Couldn't she just find a more convenient bloody time? And why bring you two kids? Shouldn't you be doing homework, or something?" The girl glared at him.

"'Kids' or not, you pull anything funny, we're here to put you in the ground." Face let out a 'pfft'.

"Yeah. Go on. I'm fucking terrified. Tell me about how you're gonna sneak up behind me and stab me in the back with a butterfly knife, you 'orrible little spook." The teenage girl looked to be getting more agitated as he spoke. "Looks to me like you've never been in a bloody fight. I'm gonna make the assumption you're trying to pass yourself off as a pro gunfighter or something with both those little things." Emerald's glare intensified, prompting a smirk from Face. He looked at the two crossed revolvers on her back. "What're those little peashooters chambered in? Nine millimeter?" He reached forward and tapped the frame of his own gun with a nail. "Try forty-four magnum, predator killer powder loaded. Maybe you'll actually _hurt_ something instead of pissing it off." Before the green-haired girl could answer back, Merc spoke up, looking at the area behind Face.

"Oh. Hey, boss."

Face stepped to his left as quickly as he could, keeping his gun aimed at the teenage girl (_Not Merc, though: He seemed alright_), before he then took the chance to look over his shoulder at 'Boss'.

There, approaching up the stairs in the same clothes he remembered seeing her in that first night, was Cinder Fall. She was looking dead at him with the same, unnerving look she gave him on the night at the docks.

After a moment's pause, he raised his gun up, twirled it round his finger, and released the hammer, before putting it back into half-cock and returning it to its holster. "Cindy?" he asked, stunned. "Thought you died in that airship crash." The shorter woman halted right in front of him, placing a hand on her hip.

"That wasn't my airship," she replied coolly. "I'm glad that prison wasn't too rough for you." Face smirked.

"More like I was too rough for prison..." he muttered, rubbing his head. Then, he gestured to the two teenagers at the bar. "What's with these two being here?"

"Oh, Emerald and Mercury? They're just added help," Cinder explained. "I did watch that stream of you fighting Professor Goodwytch. It was rather impressive: Frankly, you're slightly more impressive than I'd formerly expected. I couldn't afford to be careless when hosting a meeting with you."

"I'm not sure if I ought to take that as a compliment..." mused Face, scratching his chin. "But whatever. It was just like fighting a Soldier. What of it?" Cinder remained silent, beginning to slowly circle around him, eyeing him up and down. After a moment, she spoke.

"You know...I never did get to have a good look at you on the first evening we employed your services." Face raised a brow, folding his arms and shifting his weight whilst he looked at her.

"Right...?"

"You must be...hmm...at least six foot of trained killer?"

"Six foot two."

"Even more impressive. And how many kills was it you said you'd carried out?"

"Over ten-thousand on one rifle. That doesn't count the other kills with my revolver, SMG, machete, or bare hands."

"Well, to consider you've survived for this long in a new world, I'd say those kills were well-earned..." Cinder paused, before reaching towards his revolver. As she did so, Face was quick to bat her hand away.

"What're you trying to do, there?" he asked quickly. "Hands off the gun." Emerald braced up, hands steadily reaching for her own revolver, before she hesitated, and calmed down, smirking. The Sniper just shot her an aggressive glare, but before he could make a comment about her behaviour, something touched under his chin, and it felt like silk. Face almost shivered at the feeling; It was softer and more gentle than anything he'd felt in a _long_ time. He swallowed, as the object guided his head to look back at Cinder. The shorter woman was reaching up and gently caressing his chin, lightly circling his beard with her gentle thumb. Cinder's focused expression suggested she was inspecting him, as she pulled him down to her height, using her other hand to turn his head left to right whilst she shifted herself around slightly to look at his face.

Face, meanwhile, was completely unsure what to do. Hit her? She was his employer! Not that he hadn't ever whacked off a client after they'd double-crossed him, but most of his rather fuzzy mind was telling him not to do it. Normally, he'd have no problem, but Cinder just emanated an aura of...of...he didn't know. But just taking her the fuck down didn't seem like a good idea.

Besides...he'd never been _that_ close to a woman before. Whether or not it was the time to be thinking such thoughts, or comparing his love for guns to his love for women, he didn't care. All he cared about was a fifty fifty split between Cinder continuing to 'inspect' him, or for her to let go so he could get answers.

Just then, Cinder carefully stood him back up to full height, before shifting his motorcycle jacket out of the way and inspecting his shirted torso. It didn't take long to figure out what she was going to do as she reached towards his waist, and lifted up his shirt. He could barely even utter an angry response at the fact he was being violated in a nightclub before Cinder's seemingly magic hands reached his chest. The woman was steadily smoothing her palms and fingertips over his skin like some kind of massage goddess. Never had the Mercenary experienced such emotional confusion over events, and his face showed it, much to Emerald's entertainment.

Face remained still for another moment, breathing heavily. Just then, Cinder let out a quiet '_Hmmm..._' that sent shivers down his spine.

For the first time in a very long time, Face was _scared_.

Cinder smiled up at him in a rather predatory way. "You think of yourself as a huntsman?" she asked mockingly. Before Face could make a remark, her gentle hands suddenly planted themselves firmly onto his chest, surged forward with a surprising strength, knocking him straight onto his back. He let out a yell of surprise, scrambling for his gun, and upon withdrawing it from its holster and levelling it with the woman now standing over him, he yanked the trigger.

_Cla-tik._

_Cla-tik Cla-tik Cla-tik Cla-tik Cla-tik Cla-tik._

"You're taking the fucking PISS!" yelled the marksman, pulling himself backwards. As he moved, Cinder stalked after him, Emerald dropping down from the counter and Mercury hopping over the bar to follow behind. Face, meanwhile, flipped the revolver cylinder open to see if the round had actually been hit, only to see the round was...gone. He nearly froze in shock, but kept moving. His mind was spinning; One minute, she was touching him up, the next, she chucks him on the floor.

Angrily, he flicked the revolver closed, putting it away and beginning to try getting to his feet. Just as he managed to make it into a low crouch, there came a sudden force to the side of his face, causing him to yelp and stumble back onto the ground again. Groaning, Face looked at the floor, and spat.

No blood. Good start.

"Don't you _**dare**_ try to get back on your feet without _my_ permission," Cinder snapped, hand on her hip. To punctuate, she walked up and placed her high-heel onto the back of Face's hand, pressing down and causing him to yell in pain. "Do you want to know something?" yelled Cinder, grinding her foot. "I don't see what Ozpin sees in you! You teach _huntsmen?_ Are you supposed to be a HUNTER?" This was accompanied by the woman bringing her foot up from his hand and delivering a swift kick to Face's jaw, throwing him onto the floor again.

Why the hell couldn't he bring his body to fight back?

And...why the hell was he sort of enjoying the pain?

Whilst he lay there, clutching his face and struggling to right himself, he felt something stabbing into his back, forcing him straight down again with a grunt of pain. The mysterious woman was now stood over him, placing one foot onto his spine and stabbing the heel of her stiletto into his back. "I don't see a hunter: All I see is a weak, pathetic animal. You're just _prey_."

It was at that point that Face growled loudly, and decided enough was enough.

Angrily, he slammed his palms against the ground, pushing against the force on his back and prompting Cinder to stagger backwards. That gave Face the opening he needed to get straight to his feet, and crack his knuckles, spinning to face Emerald, Mercury, and Cinder. "What the hell's this shit all about?!" he roared, getting into a fighting stance. Emerald was quick to draw one of her guns, aiming it at his chest, but was stopped as Cinder raised a hand dismissively. The two parties stared each other down. Face rubbed his cheek. The cut across his left cheek had reopened, and was dripping blood. Sniffing in frustration, he wiped the red liquid onto his trousers and raised his fist again. Cinder said nothing, which only aggravated him more. "Don't you be fucking silent with me, you creepy bitch. You wouldn't be the first employer I've ended up killing, so I suggest you tell me _**EXACTLY**_ why you brought me here." The red-dressed woman eyed him up, then chuckled lightly.

"I missed you," she replied smoothly. "That's all."

"Bullshit."

There was more silence. Slowly, Mercury leaned over to his boss. "_Ohhhh, he's good..._" whispered the teenager, hands still in his pockets. Cinder assessed Face for another moment. Finally, she let out a sigh.

"Well, it seems there's no fooling you, is there?" she said finally, hand on her hip. "Put simply, we might need your services again." Emerald looked surprised, shooting a look at Cinder.

"W-What?!" she gasped. "But he's-!"

"A previously employed third party contractor," Cinder said calmly, not taking her eyes off him. "And from what I gather, his time at Beacon has..._toughened_ _him up_, shall we say. He did successfully defeat the legendary Glynda Goodwytch in combat, and holds a position within Beacon which could aid us." Face narrowed his eyes.

"So why set up a meeting in which you start beating the hell out of me?" he asked.

"To consider your absence from our presence, I felt it would be necessary to establish the hierarchy within your mind."

"And you decided to do that by making the assumption I was into S&amp;M?" Cinder, to his surprise, shrugged.

"It's worked before. It's how I drew in your replacement."

"Well, it ain't working on me," Face snapped, jabbing a finger at her. "And besides, I've made it a rule to not reveal secrets of one party to another if I've promised not to give out secrets. I'm no Spy."

"Then it's a good thing it's not part of my task for you. We have someone in Beacon carrying out espionage already." Face raised his brows, thinking over staff members who looked shifty. "You wouldn't have seen them. That's the reason we employed them."

"Fair point," Face nodded. He relaxed his stance slightly. "So what am I meant to do? If I get found out, I go straight back to prison."

Just then, Mercury raised a hand. "If that happens, it's my job to break you out," he explained. "That doesn't guarantee you'll stay fully intact during the escape. I'd suggest staying discreet about it." Face eyed him up and down.

"Nice boots."

"Thanks. They're chambered in twelve-gauge." Face raised a brow.

"Wha...in fact, considering some of the bullshit I've seen, don't bother. Just don't. Anyway, nice ones." He turned his gaze back to Cinder. "What am I meant to be doing?"

"Simple," she smiled. "Gain their trust. Stay amongst them, and make them think you're one of them. Once they believe you, your duty is to stab them in the back before they do any damage to us." Face sighed.

"I just said I'm not a Spy." He huffed, standing straight. "I have enough revolvers for it, but I'm not an aficionado in espionage, I don't own a disguise kit, and I can't turn invisible. How do I stab someone in the back without that?" His response came as Cinder offered a smile.

"As I say, we have someone for that." Cinder replied. "I'd say he's the Spy equivalent to you; Mediocre. No offense intended to you, of course."

"None taken. I'm fairly shit at sniping compared to some other guys I've faced."

At that moment, a shockingly familiar voice rang out from behind him, accompanied by the sound of decloaking that he'd come to dread. "That you are, Face," came the British accented response. The Sniper froze, and glanced over his shoulder.

Staring him down was the familiar form of a friendly RED Spy. More specifically, the same lime-trimmed Spy who he'd worked with for over fifteen years in the Steel facility: Ding. As he remembered, his green-brimmed Chapeau was straightened as ever, whilst his green-edged concierge coat was replaced with a lime green Victorian-era coat. Face stared him up and down as the Spy idly twirled an Ambassador on his finger.

"...how'd you find me?" Face asked. Ding shrugged.

"Went looking for work with the guy who replaced you. He met Miss Fall, and I got dragged along."

"So you've been shadowing me."

"No, I've been cloak-and-daggering around Beacon. You seem to have an interesting relationship with Glynda."

"Hey, prick," Face interrupted, jabbing his finger at him whilst Emerald and Mercury laughed. "Bear in mind I'm actually hanging with someone my age. Not like that lass you tried pulling who turned out to be about seventeen." Ding groaned.

"Oh, come on, Face," he sighed, gesturing with the universal 'why' gesture. "Don't be that guy."

"I'll be 'that guy'," he retorted, folding his arms. "So I suggest you keep my professional relationships out of this."

"Are you two quite finished?" Cinder asked frustratedly. Face and Ding glanced over to her.

"Yeah, I guess we can catch up later," Face nodded. "So...I just keep at it?"

"Indeed," Cinder replied, nodding. "From now on, though, any messages sent from the number we used to set this meeting up will be from one of my assistants, who will meet you in a specified location to give you information, or a task for completion." After a moment, Face bobbed his head understandingly.

"What about Ding? Will I be seeing him around Beacon?"

"We're already planning to open a..._space_ for him," Emerald cut in, folding her arms. Likely, we'll get him passed off as a foreign teacher when the Vytal festival comes around.

"Right." Face sighed, rubbing his forehead. He checked his watch.

11:42PM.

"Well, I need to get home," he said flatly. "Next flight's at twelve thirty."

"Would you like us to drop you off at Beacon?" Cinder asked. "We'll be taking Ding there anyway." Face raised a hand dismissively.

"Nah. Looks more convincing if I go in the legal way. That way, I only get a roasting from Glynda, not a whipping." Ding snorted at the comment.

"And you told Miss Fall you weren't into S&amp;M..." he chuckled.

"Jog on, you sneaky prick," Face snapped as those around began airing their amusement. "Ex-teammate or not, I'll still kick your teeth down your fucking throat." Ding raised his hands defensively. Once the laughter had died down, Cinder gave an understanding nod to Face.

"Your choice is understandable," she mused, turning to leave. Mercury, Ding, and Emerald followed on behind. "Welcome back to the White Fang, Mr. Face. Do _not_ let us down." Silently, Face raised a thumb as they went, watching them leave through a side door of the club. The music was still playing, so he wasn't concerned anyone had listened to their conversation, but his mind returned to the fact the club was empty. Once the door closed, he released a breath he didn't know he was holding, and converted his thumbs up to the gesture for 'wanker', shaking his hand side to side in an imaginary grip.

"Get absolutely _fucked_!" he called after them, shaking his head and beginning to make his way out of the club. Just before he left, though, he noticed some shiny, individual objects standing on the bar, arranged in lines. He couldn't make them out from the distance he was at, especially not with his sunglasses on. He hesitated, considering whether to leave or investigate, before making his way over to the counter.

To his frustration, lined up neatly on the black worktop was every single .44 Magnum round he'd brought with him, all arranged in lines of ten, as well as a note. At the front, there was an additional six. Presumably, they were the ones from his revolver. He stared in disbelief, slowly unfolding the note.

_Mr. Face_

_Nice bullets._

_Mine're bigger._

_\- Emmy xxx_

He grit his teeth.

"You cheeky little bitch."


	12. One Morning

The next day, when Glynda sat opposite him for breakfast, Face couldn't help but notice that she seemed troubled. She was resting her head on her left hand, which she was using to prop her head up whilst she stared thoughtfully ahead. Swallowing his burned piece of toast with no butter, Face raised a brow at her. "You alright there, Professor?" he asked. As though his voice had snapped her back to reality, the woman shook her head slightly, looked at him, then smiled slightly.

"Uh, yes, of course. Sorry if I seem a little far away," Glynda replied, rubbing her forehead. "I'm just concerned." Face looked up slightly, thinking.

"Concerned?" he repeated, mulling the word over. "About?" Glynda shot him a deadpan look.

"You didn't hear about Professor Port's teaching assistant that was meant to be coming back tomorrow?" Face frowned, and shook his head, leaning forward.

"Uh, no," he said, "No, I didn't. What happened?" Glynda paused, looked around, then leaned forward to whisper to Face.

"_Allegedly, he was on his way here, and someone stabbed him in the back whilst he waited for a bus. Thankfully, his Aura blocked most of it, but he's in critical condition in Vale's hospital. An absolutely pathetic attack._" Face frowned, nodding in understanding.

_'Wonder who could've done that.'_

"Christ, no kidding," he sighed, shaking his head. "Takes a really cowardly wanker to just carry out something like that. You gonna let the students know?" Professor Goodwytch shook her head, sipping her coffee.

"We can't," she replied miserably, "If we told the students, they'd be devastated. Mr. Sauvignon may have had an alcohol problem, but the students loved him for the way he helped during Port's lectures."

"How'd he do that?" Face asked.

"He'd normally be intoxicated, and Port would call him in to play the role of 'inexperienced fighter' whenever he was displaying something." Glynda sighed again, chuckling to herself. "It was surprising how long he could actually fend off Port whilst his thought process was saturated with booze..." Face smirked, leaning back.

"Oh, you haven't seen alcoholism 'til you've seen one of my old teammates," he said, adjusting his hat brow slightly. A few students turned to listen in on another of his stories. "This guy had one eye, and that eye had two focuses; Blowing things up, and booze. Most of the times he was in battle, he was absolutely _wankered_, and just ran around smashing people's heads in with a glass bottle. The other times, he had a grenade launcher, and set about turning the BLU guys into wallpaper paste. The rest of the times, he was a scary motherfucker. Some idiot gave him a shield and a haunted sword and it was fucking _terrifying_."

"Oh, please, Professor!" Glynda scoffed, folding her arms with a doubtful smirk. "I've heard you say some things, but _this_ takes the cake. A _haunted sword_?"

"Trust me, I didn't believe it at first, either," Face retorted, raising a finger as Glynda shook her head, smiling. "Massive greatsword. Sort of glowed green most of the time. Apparently, it was made back in the time where England was invading Scotland, and the sword was slow-forged in the bowels of captured English knights."

His co-worker frowned at the thought, whistling through her teeth. "That doesn't sound good..."

"Damn right, it wasn't good. Whenever Demo had this sword out, he said he could hear it calling to him. It was speaking to him, demanding something in particular that the spirit inside the sword absolutely _craved_." Glynda stared at Face for a moment.

"...and that thing was?"

"Heads."

Glynda swallowed.

"It was a weird partnership between the two. Most days, Demo was plastered, and left the sword at home with his Mum. I met his Mum once when I got invited to Demo's house to watch the football back in England. His Mum hated me, the sword, and the fact Demo had time to invite anyone over." Glynda tilted her head side to side.

"She couldn't have been _that_ bad. Surely she was just going by appearances?"

"She's blind, she called me 'an ugly bastard', and told me to '_shove what little pride I had in my terrible life up my arse'_, so let's leave it at that." A group of students nearby broke out laughing as Glynda concealed chuckles. The elderly certainly had a way with words where Face was from. "Anyway, on other days, Demo was sober, and was charging through streams of flames, explosions, and gunfire with this sword over his head, decapitating anyone who came near him that _wasn't_ wearing red." Face paused, scratching his chin.

"Don't get me wrong, he was a great bloke and all, but there's something really alarming about watching an angry Scotsman cutting the head from the shoulders of a giant Russian guy with a minigun. Equally so, the same goes for watching that same Scotsman going to everyone on your team and hugging them because they're his 'best mate', and all that."

"So he was drunk constantly?" Glynda asked. Face nodded. "Then he must have had a very high tolerance for alcohol."

"Indeed he did." Face sipped his coffee. "He could drink gallons and gallons of beer and not feel a thing, whilst the rest of us were black-out drunk. Contrary to that, he took one sip of his family's whiskey, and he was absolutely _pasted_. The label on the bottle said it had something like 80% alcohol content, or something." A few students nearby that were more well-versed in the consumption of alcohol winced at the thought of something that was probably dangerous enough to kill on the first bottle. "I tried it once." Face mocked an expression of disgust. "Tasted like a mix of paint stripper and shit. Can't remember anything else because I passed out."

"Wow..." Glynda whistled. "You should probably tell Mr. Sauvignon about your world's whiskey if you ever meet him."

Face shrugged. "Actually, I think I've got about thirty bottles of it in my backpack." Glynda hesitated, staring at him as though he were delusional.

"...you planned to drink them?" she asked. Face shook his head, grabbing a piece of bacon and swallowing the whole thing in one go.

"Planned to beat people over the head with them," he corrected. "Full bottle of booze is surprisingly effective at killing most of the guys we used to have coming at us. And when it broke?" He smiled. "Well, then it's turned into a stabbing tool, eh?"

His blonde co-worker mulled this over for a moment.

_'That's...__**one**__ way of looking at it...'_

"Why the look?" he asked. "You want some? I can swing by your room with a bottle later, if you want." Immediately, Goodwytch's face felt hot, and she could hear a few students laughing. Face, however, remained indifferent. What was so funny about offering alcohol? Was it rude, or something?

After a moment of Face looking blankly at her and students chuckling, Glynda cleared her throat. "That...ahem, that won't be necessary, Professor," she said finally. Face just shrugged.

"Suit yourself. Like hell if I'm drinking any of it without someone to make sure I don't get so drunk that I fall out of a window, or something."

"You've given me more reason to avoid drinking it, then."

"Eh, I tried."

The two continued their usual morning discussion for a lengthier period than normal, due to Glynda and Face having free periods with no marking to do that morning. Thus, after leaving the dining hall, they decided to go for a walk around Beacon. The sun wasn't exactly at its highest point, but it was still burning hot. Face glanced up at Ozpin's tower, and winced. "Christ..." he muttered. "Feel sorry for Professor Ozpin. Stuck up in a glass room with giant windows and a leather chair on a sunny day." Glynda raised a brow, calmly pacing alongside the Sniper and looking at him curiously.

"I thought you were used to extreme temperatures?" she noted.

"Well, _I'm_ used to it," he sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Running about in the Badlands can do that to you, especially when you mix it with rain, mud, and missiles. I can't be sure that Professor Ozpin's fine with the heat, though. He's got a giant window with the sun burning down on him." Glynda shrugged.

"I wouldn't worry about it," she said calmly. "If anything's going to kill him, it's _definitely_ not going to be heat. A little bit of warmth never hurt anyone."

Face immediately had brief, vivid flashbacks to the amount of times that an enemy Pyro had coated him in napalm and watched as his flesh melted and peeled from his bones.

"I'm..." He held his tongue as Glynda looked at him with the usual raised brow she had whenever he was about to say something. "...not gonna make a comment." His companion smiled, giving a playful push to his shoulder.

"Oh, come on, you can tell me. You had something to say, and anything about your past helps us understand you more." Face shrugged as they approached a large tree, and set himself down.

"Well, I can't exactly pin this down in a simple way," he grunted, sighing as he leaned against the tree and crossed his legs. "But, sod it, I might as well give it a go." Following his example, Goodwytch, cautiously put herself down beside him in the shade. Once she was settled, he began. "So, going by what you know so far about me that's different from your world, what're the main things about me that you'd say stand out?"

Glynda thought for a moment. "Well, you specified that you're an ex-Mercenary, which already makes you stand out since Mercenary work is already a rather restricted business in Remnant." Face nodded.

"That's a given; Murder's a taboo, here. What else have I mentioned?"

"You...fought clones of yourself, every day, for fifteen or so years, and each clone had a different personality."

"Indeed. That was my social circle for fifteen years. You're on the right track."

"...you've also mentioned something called a 'respawn'." Face flicked his fingers at her in a pistol gesture, free hand behind his head.

"Bang on." He returned his hands to behind his head, and shifted against the tree. "The R.E.S.P.A.W.N system was made years before I entered the business, by the original BLU Engineer's father, back in about the 1920's or 1930's. No specific date given, but that's what I got told. Anyway, when you become a Mercenary in TF Industries, they take your DNA and mind, then kill you, and put the DNA and mind into a copy of one of the nine 'Originals'." Glynda was slightly shocked.

"So you're just a copy of someone else?" she asked, mortified. Face nodded calmly.

"Yep. My old body was slightly shorter and slightly more built. This one is a clone of the body of a New Zealander who was employed by TF Industries to work as a Sniper. When he joined, they did the same to him, but only kept the genetic copy of him. Did this with eight other Mercs, as well; All of whom had their own special skills to use in the battlefield."

Goodwytch slowly nodded, remembering what he'd said a while before. "A class-based warfare..."

"Exactly. The guy I'm based on was the original Sniper. Then you had the original Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, and Spy. All of them got copies made of them. Whenever they...y'know, _died_, the R.E.S.P.A.W.N device would do...something, and reproduce a direct copy of them, alive and well, with the memories of what they were doing before they died, and put them back in their base to go out and keep fighting. Most of the time, Snipers like me would get wiped out by Spies and Scouts. It's part of the reason why I hated those arseholes the most."

Glynda's look of slight disgust worsened into absolute disgust. "You were..._human cannon fodder_?"

"One way of putting it." Face reclined against the tree, rubbing his nails on his shirt and checking them over. "In _very_ bad fights, I'd die about twenty times in the space of ten or fifteen minutes. Other times, I'd only be killed once every...two or three battles." He glanced over at her, smirking. "And you don't want to get me started on how many guys I'd take out during those two or three battles." Glynda swallowed. "Of course, they'd come back just like me and the rest of my team. Sometimes, the R.E.S.P.A.W.N system would accept 'transfer Mercs', which were basically just files moved to different systems to put new Mercs in new locations."

He hesitated.

"Well...that's what _we_ got told, anyway. There was probably more to it, but as far as I'm concerned, there was free accommodation, free food, excellent pay, and a good excuse to kill Germans, Russians, and Americans, over and over again." Glynda sat up against the tree.

"Well, how many people had this...system taken in?"

"Eh?"

"How many of you 'Mercs' were there, based on the original nine?"

"At last count before I left..." Face looked up at his hat brow in thought. "...about...twenty eight million, or so."

Glynda's jaw dropped.

"And this doesn't even slightly trouble you?" she asked, confused. Face shrugged.

"Well, I've gotten over it, haven't I?" he retorted casually. "And it's not like they'd kill me at the end of it. Mercs that retire get given a choice; If you killed _over_ ten thousand enemies, you could choose to have all your pay taken away but get a small R.E.S.P.A.W.N terminal so that you could live forever, or to keep your pay and live comfortably." The Sniper sniffed slightly. "I didn't get to retire. I'd planned to choose the endless life and go on endless adventures, like I'd always wanted to as a kid. Instead, I got pulled here, and as far as I know...if I die here, I'm done. My life'll be all be finished, forever. I won't respawn, and I wouldn't have left my mark on the world." His female companion gave a rather sad look to him, then shifted up beside Face, saying nothing to the shorter man.

There was a silence between the two of them.

"You're wrong."

"Eh?"

Glynda looked down at him. Even sitting down, she was taller than him. "You're wrong. If you were to die today, you would have definitely left a mark in Beacon."

"Really?" Face asked, looking up at her. "How?"

"Well, for one thing, you beat me in a fight. That told me that I needed to start judging my opponents more effectively."

"Uh...I guess?"

"Then, you have a class of students that would _hate_ to see you go. Specifically Miss Nikos and Miss Scarletina, who have both issued you '_Lad_' and '_Absolute G_' as ratings in regards to your lessons."

"Hmm. That's a point."

"This also doesn't bring into account the fact that when I spoke to Warden Latchkey of Vale Prison whilst I was signing your release forms, he told me that you managed to entertain crowds of inmates by telling them jokes and stories of your past, and he'd be rather sad to see you go." Face looked surprised.

"I was more entertained that those guys hadn't ever experienced those kind of fights before..." he mused. "I mean, haven't they ever fought a guy who was using a fish as a bat?" Face glanced at his female companion. "You've had that, right?"

With a slightly bemused smirk on her face, Glynda slowly shook her head. "...not that I can remember..."

Face blinked. "...never fought against someone using an alien laser cannon?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Not watched a conga line break out in a battlefield?"

"No, but the thought of that does amuse me."

"You don't break out into impromptu aerobics routines with your team after a well-earned victory?"

"I don't think my team ever did."

"Haven't you ever fought a ten foot tall ghost wizard, or a flying eyeball that shoots smaller eyeballs that can blow you up?"

"...I think I would remember that."

"You haven't been attacked by a horde of teenagers that all shouted 'Bonk!' whilst smashing your brains in with baseball bats?"

"Thankfully not...I take it that happened to you?"

"Yep. But seriously, you haven't had that happen to you?" Glynda shook her head again.

"Never. The way you described it just then made it seem like your fights were almost..._fun._"

"What do you mean?"

"Well...the bats, laser cannons, conga lines, all the people shouting 'Bonk!', and the aerobics. It sounds...funny. As if it were some sort of comedy routine."

"It sounds like it, but it really wasn't. I mean, sure, people respawned, and sometimes people got a bit angry at the joking around, but..." Face began looking slightly upset, staring ahead almost vacantly as Glynda watched him. "...it's all fun and games, until the other guys don't get to come back." She dipped her head down slightly to see under Face's hat brow.

"Are you alright, Professor?"

Face's response was hesitant, but it showed up eventually. He perked his head up, and put on a slightly forced chuckle. "Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm...I'm good. Just...thinking back, 's all."

Glynda slowly nodded, eyeing him with a bit of concern. She made a mental note to try and get him to divulge the information he was quite clearly withholding at a later time, and leaned back up against the tree. There was silence between the two, as they sat in the shade and observed the surprisingly vibrant wildlife of Beacon's campus. Face checked his watch. Quarter to twelve. He was due to be giving a lesson at half one. He wasn't certain about Glynda.

How long was he meant to be working for?

"Professor?" he began, eliciting a sigh from the woman beside him.

"Listen, as much as I appreciate you calling me by my title," she began, "I think we know each other well enough that I'll accept it if you refer to me as 'Glynda'." Face coughed. Shit. She was getting used to him.

"...uh...right you are...Glynda." He straightened himself up. "So...I've been wondering this for a couple of days. What'm I doing once I finish my time working here?" Glynda looked at him.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"You said it a while back, on the third or fourth day I was working here. You told me I was probably going back to prison once I was done here, and Professor Ozpin was _maybe_ planning to pay me."

"Right."

"So what's going on? Am I going back to prison?"

Glynda looked over at him to eye him up and down. She certainly had come to see him in a different light since he'd arrived.

At first, she saw him as the low-life scum that Ozpin had pulled out of prison for some contrived reason, as per his usual, ominous ways. She'd even bet that he would be dead within a week.

But at that point, she could see Face as a good person who just got wrapped up in all the wrong things, in all the wrong places, at all the wrong times, and just had to stick with it. He had a moral compass; he enjoyed looking after his students; he had regrets; and he was more qualified than anyone to talk about how dangerous a battlefield was.

Most of all, Face knew that he wasn't the hero.

Glynda had seen so many students, teachers, and comrades alike fail due to their own mistakes: They gave a shout and brought too much attention to themselves; they tried to prove themselves against a tough opponent only to be slaughtered; they tried to create a media image for themselves but fell flat, ending their career and forcing them into an early retirement. Face could afford no such luxury: If he got into the limelight, people would try to dig up his background, and a whole burial ground of unpleasantness would be seen by all.

Glynda sighed. "I...I don't know what's going to happen," she said finally. Face looked a slight disheartened. "As far as I can gather, Ozpin is very seriously considering you as permanent staff at Beacon. What he plans for you to do, I don't know. But if he decides you can stay...it'll all be fine, yes?"

Face slowly nodded, and looked back ahead of him slightly dejectedly. "If I may ask...why does this trouble you so much?" Glynda asked finally.

"I've always had a job," he sighed, rubbing his face. "When I was five, I used to tidy the house with my Mum. When I turned eight, I was doing the dishes. When I was eleven, I was doing post deliveries for my parents. When I turned fifteen, my friends would pay me to tie people's shoelaces together, or some other prank. When I turned sixteen, I joined the Army. Right out of the training, I became a Mercenary, and have been ever since. I don't remember what it's like to not have a job. And the prospect of not having income..." He hesitated, and looked up at his female companion. "...I'm not gonna cover it up. It scares the shit out of me, Glynda. I'm scared that now that I'm in this world, I won't be able to get a job with my credentials list that just says '_once kicked a man out of a skyscraper and onto a steel spike_'. My worlds' money's worthless here, nobody employs killers, and I've got no specific skills that'll let me do anything that some younger Huntsman couldn't do better, and faster."

Glynda stared at him. "You're scared of becoming obsolete? That's all?"

"I've faced gunfire, fire, blades, and explosions. I've seen the 'other side' more times than I can count. I don't have anything else to fear because my work let me face everything I'd fear anyway, so the one thing I _can_ fear is just that: Nothing. The thought of being able to do nothing, because I can do nothing that someone else can't do better." Glynda kept her worried gaze on him. He looked as if he was having a breakdown. For a moment, she gazed at his face to see what he planned next, before he suddenly blinked a few times and laughed awkwardly, rubbing his eyes and straightening up. "Wow. Look at me, right? I must be getting old: I'm having emotions! Ain't that something? Maybe it's the heat, or...or something...but I think I can keep my cool, eh?"

Glynda looked at him sadly, watching the tired warrior trying as hard as he could to compose himself so that he wouldn't just fall apart at the seams. Face was just adjusting his coat, hat, glasses, and shirt collar repeatedly, as if he didn't realise just how much he looked like he was trying to act the tough guy about the whole thing. He'd just poured out some rare emotion, specifically about what scared him the most. As far as Glynda's experience with both students and staff alike went, the one thing they'd need the most during the confusion was someone they knew to stay with them.

As far as she knew, she was the only person in Beacon who actually spoke to Face on a regular basis. Once the novelty of his other-worldly life had worn off in the staff room, the conversations returned to politics and sports, which Face didn't understand, thus excluding him from discussion. He didn't speak to his students outside of lessons. She'd only ever seen him conversing with Ozpin and Oobleck a few times, and obviously Face and Oobleck must have gotten on well if they'd commandeered the staff balcony for a barbecue, but she hadn't seen any contact between the two.

Sighing, and knowing she was probably going to regret it and everything leading up to it, Glynda shifted up next to Face and put her arm around him, pulling him closer to her. Face offered surprisingly little resistance, continuing to stare ahead at nothing, almost as if he wasn't registering the physical contact at all. Carefully, Glynda moved herself so that she was directly beside him, and held his head next to her left shoulder. "_It's alright._" she whispered in as calm a tone as she could muster. "_I'm not judging you._"

God, she felt _really_ fucking awkward doing this.

There was a silence between the two once again.

"_Glynda?_" came Face's voice, muffled as it was pressed into her shoulder.

"_Yes?_" she said gently.

"_What the bloody hell are we doing?_"

More silence between the two.

"_W-Well...you know...you looked like you were having a breakdown...of sorts..._"

"_Oh. OK. Does this help somehow?_"

"_Apparently so. Something to do with...ahem, 'maternal warmth'._"

"_Doesn't seem to be helping. Maybe it's because I didn't really like my Mum._"

"_R-Right..._" Glynda kept a very sharp eye out for students, but could see none. God, the rumours if any of them saw what they were doing. "_...shall I stop?_"

There was a hesitation.

"_...I don't know. When is this meant to stop feeling really, really wrong?_"

"_Wrong in what way?_"

"_Well...Glynda, you're kind of suffocating me with your boob._"

Immediately, Glynda pushed him away, and the two promptly went their separate ways to their individual lectures, never to see each other until the next morning.

If they had remained a moment longer, they would have heard the loud _whoosh_ of a decloak, accompanied by a short, British chortling.


End file.
